Manchester City have taken action against their own player following the nasty incident where Thatcher struck Mendes across the face with his elbow. Causing the Pompey player to require medical attention at a local hospital. City have imposed a six game ban on the player and fined him six weeks wages.

The incident happened on the touch line as Mendes was trying to clear the ball. With the score at 0-0 neither side were chasing the game enough to warrant any rash challenges, but Thatcher led with his arm and paid the ball little attention. The astonishing fact is Thatcher only received a yellow card for the challenge, when other players have been sent off this season for fairly innocuous challenges.

Thatcher has form for this kind of incident, in 2000 while playing for Wimbledon he elbowed Sunderland’s Nicky Summerbee, incurring a two match ban.

Is the ban enough? A six game holiday and a proportionately miniscule fine, would that make a footballing ego tow the line and learn a lesson? Should the club be docked points as a result of their players gross misconduct? Perhaps its time for the PFA to step in and take responsibility in disciplining its members for foul play and cheating. Possibly by enrolling Thatcher in a community service programme until he has paid his debt, for inflicting deliberate injury on a fellow member of the players union. The punishment should have a lasting effect on the player to ensure that they don’t commit the same act again, giving small fines and time off work to people who earn hundreds of thousands of pounds and enjoy a lavish lifestyle, as depicted in the television series Footballers Wive$, is hardly fitting punishment.

Compare the six game ban and six week fine for pole-axing a player to the fine imposed by Real Betis for a player returning to work nine days late. They fined Ricardo Oliveira a million Euro when he returned to work late from his summer holiday. It’s time the footballing authorities in the Premiership got tough to eradicate the blight of cheating and foul play that spoils the game.