Apologies to Insect Life

Just some stories on the Pogatetz tackle this morning.  What is perhaps surprising is that they all (almost all) choose to relate Pogatetz's apology without comment.  Even though it is a rather self-serving-I-didn't-do-anything-wrong type apology.  Here it is, quoted from The Daily Star:

“Firstly,
I have to say that I went for the tackle because I thought I could win
the ball. I now accept that I misjudged the challenge.



“Immediately after the incident I did not think it was a red-card offence because I did win the ball.

“But now that I have had the chance to see the tackle on television, I know the ref was right to send me off.

“I am going to speak to Rodrigo by phone and I will apologise for
hurting him. I hope that he will make a quick recovery and will not be
out for long.”

Wha this basically amounts to is, "I didn't do anything wrong, but I guess it looked bad".  Is that acceptable?  You launch into a dreadful tackle like that and you think there's nothing wrong with it?
Most of the stories combine this apology from Pogatetz with the story about The FA thinking of introducing a sliding scale for suspensions based on the severity of the challenge, for instance this from The Times.  Obviously this is, in some way, an implicit criticism of the tackle, but it still lets off Pogatetz too easily as far as I'm concerned.  Only this story from Daniel Taylor in The Guardian includes further condemnation of Pogatetz, from Giggs and Gary Pallister:

"You can mistime a tackle now and again but he was sliding over the
ball," said Ryan Giggs, United's captain during a 3-1 victory for
Ferguson's team. "That was a bad challenge and the referee has rightly
sent him off."

Pallister was even more critical. "Everyone knew
immediately it was a bad one," he said. "Pogatetz tried to give it the
innocent look but when you see it in slow motion he's actually hit the
ball first but the angle he is tackling he knows he is going to hit
Possebon's leg. And he does - with great force. Pogatetz has got that
part to his game sometimes. He likes to steam in but this was a bad one
and he is going to have to face the consequences."

Tony Cascarino has another in a series of stupid opinions:

The challenge by Pogatetz on Possebon was a red card, but no further
action is justified. It’s not the worst tackle I’ve seen this season by
a long way, but the follow-through as Pogatetz came sliding in, with
his studs showing, could easily have broken Possebon’s leg.

Fortunately that hasn’t happened, but we can’t be judging tackles solely on whether or not people end up in hospital.

Firstly, I've seen a few bad challenges this season, but to suggest that this tackle was "a long way" from being the worst is, well, pretty strange.  It's a short way.  Certainly one of the worst.  If I had a top ten it would certainly be in there.  First he says it wasn't a bad challenge, then he says it could have broken Possebon's leg, then he says you can't judge a tackle on whether someone goes to hospital or not.  Now, pardon me, but if you go into a tackle, an insanely reckless tackle that could send someone to hospital, shouldn't you be punished.  I agree that whether  or not said player actually goes to hospital or not is incidental.  But hospital threatening tackles should be treated more severely than non hospital threatening tackles, shouldn't they?  And as he's admitted that Pogatetz could have broken Possebon's leg, this would be one of those cases.  It's not like it was some accidental collision.  It was straight out assault. I certainly don't think it was, to quote Cascarino, "mistimed by a split second".  It was a horrendous tackle, not due to a mistiming, but due to his jumping in off the ground and attacking Possebon with both feet. 
The only mistiming could have been that Pogatetz intended to break his leg and just missed, and even I don't think that was the intention...