THE gangs of old New York battled each other at the notorious Five Points corner in Martin Scorsese’s hit film, which was on TV over Christmas.
Now in this new year comes the Premier League’s offering for a sequel, a five-way razor fight for the title with an outcome brilliantly difficult to predict but with one certainty; blood on the technical area floor.
As the competition intensifies towards May, as the blood of our crazed mob of Dug-Out Dons boils with the stress and the fervour of it all, the Respect campaign will surely face its ultimate test in its first season.
It is holding for now. Just. But referees and officials are going to come under pressure from managers and players like never before. The FA’s determination to stand by their men is going to be placed under siege more quickly and more ferociously than they hoped.
The swarming of referee Steve Bennett by the Aston Villa team at Hull on Tuesday night could be only the start. Things will surely get more ugly.
Referees and officials are going to come under pressure from managers and players like never before
Isn’t it funny how managers and players who so regularly demand consistency from referees feel no need to apply basic logic to their own comments? The uproar at the KC Stadium over the penalty that was, then wasn’t, proves the point magnificently.
This isn’t a knocking job on Hull’s manager Phil Brown, who admitted that Ashley Young hadn’t handled the ball so there should never have been a spot-kick awarded. Yet he also said he was baffled and angered by Bennett’s change of mind, after his assistant advised him to reverse the decision.
This is classic doublethink, the like of which only football managers can create in their fevered minds.
The game is so intense and unpredictable, of course, that, somehow, we could even understand what he meant, even if the referee was right and Brown’s argument did not make sense in terms of pure reason.
If ever you needed evidence of how the job consumes these men until they can’t think straight, this was it. The rest of us can view these matters dispassionately, if we choose to. For bosses, it is a different matter. Their beliefs, methods and, ultimately, their jobs depend on these decisions going their way.
If this is how things are on a freezing evening between Christmas and New Year between teams then in fifth and eighth place, imagine how fiery it may all get once the big issues reach a critical point.
Already, Arsene Wenger is overheating again, which is what happens when things get particularly frustrating for Arsenal. First, he claimed against all visual evidence that his centre-forward Emmanuel Adebayor had been ill-treated when he was sent off for going in studs-up against Liverpool.
Then he nearly had a scrap with his fellow manager Martin O’Neill at Villa Park. Sir Alex Ferguson has already in this campaign been hit by a two-match touchline ban and £10,000 fine for haranguing referee Mike Dean. Meanwhile,
Luiz Felipe Scolari was so incensed that Phil Dowd had dared send off John Terry at Everton he couldn’t speak in public afterwards. Scolari has missed more press conferences since, which surely shows he is aware he could do his nut anytime soon. Chelsea have had four red cards this season – two in the Premier League, both received by Terry, and two in Europe. Arsenal and United have had two in the league as well. Aston Villa have suffered one, in Europe. Liverpool, who are top of the table, have none at all.
This is a title race that looks so thrillingly close it may be settled by the finest of margins. The FA are in for a tough job keeping the lid on. But perhaps those statistics about dismissals offer these battling bosses a clue about how to win this closest of all Premier League campaigns. The managers and players who play it coolest may turn out to be the smart ones.
PS. HARD-UP West Ham admit they will look “rationally at every single approach” for their players in the transfer window. But that symbol on their shirts is a picture of two hammers, not a January sales Blue X. Honest.
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