Henry Digs In (Not Literally Of Course)

Following his side's potentially disastrous draw on home turf against Fulham, Wolves midfielder Karl Henry has decided to reignite a forgotten feud: the dirty Murphy battle.

It all started, as we're all ungratefully aware, when Craven Cottage bared witness to a rather crude form of football which, admittedly not directly (but in relation to nonetheless), resulted in our very own stellar striker Bobby Zamora nursing a broken leg. The man whom accidentally caused the England international's horrific injury was Karl Henry; a frivolously brutish central midfielder if ever there were one.

Jumping to the defence of his injured compatriot, Fulham captain Danny Murphy condemned Mick McCarthy's tactics, as well as those at similar sides such as Stoke, claiming they are thuggish and unnecessary. It's unlike me to be biased towards Fulham, but, he is pretty much spot on.

Every team has a right to play football how they want, but if a certain style leads to professionals getting hurt almost beyond repair, then it should certainly not be condoned.

As expected, all the teams Murphy mentioned took his comments with a rather large portion of salt, perhaps washed down with water, but, almost half a year on, I would have thought the whole furore would have boiled over to an almost calming degree.

Not so, however, and Karl Henry used his post match chat with the press to further 'bash' Murphy with a less-than-witty lyrical attack, suggesting the Fulham skipper's comments have made referees more trigger happy towards the Molineux outfit.

"We had seven yellow cards [when the sides met at Craven Cottage] and everything that has happened after that has not helped our season.

"Murphy's comments have changed the public perception of us and maybe the referees' perception of us, too. It's taken us a long time to lose that tag. [But] it's been dragged up again because we were playing Fulham," said the Wolves player.

"We thought we had lost that tag a long time before we played Newcastle away [on 2nd April]. It seems the referee up there had it in his mind straight away that he was going to book us.

"The advice was to not do anything silly and not pick up any silly yellow cards. We picked [them] up anyway.

"The referee identified that we were targeting Joey Barton. That was a load of rubbish. That flatters Joey Barton a ridiculous amount because we don't even talk about him in our team talks."

Before his speech veered off course, though, Henry had one last piece of advice for the far more experienced and wiser Murphy, telling him to 'shut up' off the pitch and do his talking on it.

"There was nothing much said on the pitch.

"I think he's just a bit of a big mouth. He doesn't really want to say much on it. He just says it off it."

I wonder if Mr Henry sees the irony in his final flourish?