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Dirty is what other teams use to describe a player, whereas their own team think of them as 'hard players'
People cite Dennis Wise as dirty, but to masses of Chelsea fans, he was 'commited'.......Ok, he wound a few players up, but thats hardly dirty.

Dean Saunders was a dirty player to Chelsea fans when he took out Paul Elliot, leaving his career all but finished, but to Liverpool fans, it was a hard but fair tackle.

As regards Joey Barton..........the ONLY Man City player to make any kind of effort wearing the shirt this season.

Used to drink with old Mick,actually really a quiet guy...but..
Good snooker player,we played together for about a year at the Solihull Municipal club around '84/85.We both lived in Widney Lane,as did a few other Blues players like Mark Dennis.
Birmingham fan,and by gum did we have our share of 'hard' players,but the topic is dirty players.Cheating isn't for 'hard men',although the press sometimes label them as such.
I remember one so called hard man Steve McMahon,he got the nut dropped on him by Noel Blake,never saw a whimper out of him after that.
On BRMB after the match Tony Butler asked Noel why he hit him,his reply was "I didn't hit him,if I had he'd never have got back up"....memories:)

Solihull, there was an article in Match of the Day magazine about all the players who ended up at Birmingham at the same time...Noel Blake, Mick Harford, Tony Coton, Mark Dennis...but one of the most notorious was apparently Robert Hopkins, who started out as a Villa player despite being a Blues fan! Needless to say that didn't last too long! I think Ron Saunders had his work cut out to keep all that lot in order!

Jonone, the only Mick Harford anecdote I can come up with is when we played West Ham at Upton Park in the semi-final of the League Cup back in 1989, and he basically took out Julian Dicks in the first few minutes with a strategically placed elbow to the head....Dicks was I think concussed for the rest of the game & gave away a penalty by nearly strangling Roy Wegerle as we went on to win 3-0...happy days!

Ian Ure of Arsenal was a very dirty player, same era as Hunter and Harris.

Got to be Grame Souness for me, I remember his first game for Rangers straight from the kick off he basically assaulted the 1st player that came near him and broke his leg (talk about leaving your mark early, at least the guy he went for had the ball at the time though!!) he was of course shown a straight red and everybody was left wondering just what we had let ourselves in for ... though history shows he did a pretty darn good job though.
Not far behind would be Terry Hurlock who was one of the fiercest characters you would ever set eyes on and liked a tackle!! one of those laid back type of likeable guys until he laced up his boots and went on the park and became a different proposition.

Good shout Crofter,Souness was as hard as nails.I remember that game at Easter Road on his debut well ,and Terry hurlock was a complete psycho!laugh!.

Greame Roberts could also put in a meaty tackle when required.