Three and in – not just another football blog

Every so often Lawrence Gray-Hodson, a man who made his name in the upper reaches of Division 2 in the 1970s and 80s as well as being a former Scotland and England international, writes a column exclusively for Three and in.

This week he opines on Arsenal’s need for a new owner

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Much has been made of the troubles at Arsenal at the moment and it would be a blind man who could say that everything was ok at the Emirates Stadium these days.

The team are struggling to find any form or consistency and Arsene Wenger looks like a shepherd that has lost his best sheep and found a shaved dog with some wool glued onto him to make him look like a sheep. Many people say that Arsenal need a new manager, that Wenger is a busted thrush, but that’s the last thing they need.

Wenger is a genius. Who else could buy Kolo Toure for £250,000 then sell him for £14m all the while keeping his rampant bulimia a secret? Who else could have knobbled Spurs by buying Emmanuel Adebayor from Monaco, knowing his despicable nature would mean he ended up at White Hart Lane years later where he will most certainly destroy team spirit with his wicked, eastern european African ways.

Kroenke is the wrong man for Arsenal

No, what Arsenal need is a new owner. You might say ‘They’ve already got one’ but they need a newer one than that. Stan Kroenke might know how to get an end zone in the touch play, or attract many people who have sex with their cousins to his chain of supermarkets, but what does he know about English football?

As an American he’s already 54% less knowledgeable about ‘soccer’, as they call it, and that’s a scientific fact. Their brains simply aren’t wired to understand it, the way ours cannot comprehend the fact that tea parties are for little girls and doll-houses, not for running great nations.

There’s another billionaire lurking about too, Alisher Usmanov owns nearly 30% of Arsenal but to choose him as the man to take charge would be foolish indeed. Usmanov is simply too fat to own a football club. What if, during a pre-game dinner in the Diamante Club in Arsenal’s exclusive area, he had a heart attack brought about by his enormous girth? Then where would Arsenal be? At the whim of Usmanov’s heirs, that’s where, and they might decide that they don’t want to own a football club after all and simply knock down the stadium to build a multistory car park.

Anyone with a brain can see that the influx of petroleum cash into football is the way forward. Abramovich at Chelsea, Sheik Manhoor at Man City, PSG, Malaga and soon Man United will all be run by oil rich owners. So why not Arsenal?

And if the tendency is to look to the middle-east then I believe Arsenal should do it differently. The way they always have done. I remember when I played there once in a cup game in the mid-70s. We were treated so well by the club, giving us a plate of ham sandwiches and some bottles of Tizer in our dressing room pre-game. No other club in the land did that (although Barnsley always laid on some mini pork pies which were very tasty). It was that touch of class that set Arsenal apart, and that’s what they need to re-capture.

If I were Ivan Gazidis I would be on the first flight to Caracas and I’d knock on the door of Hugo Chavez, going nowhere until he agreed to see me. Venezuela has loads of oil to fund the purchase of new players and help bump up Arsenal’s ability to pay decent wages. And Chavez is a man used to fighting the power, upsetting the establishment.

I think he would dovetail beautifully with Peter Hill-Wood, the Etonian and the Revolutionary coming together to create a perfect environment of Conservative Bolivarianism with a Trotskyite flavour that, if you talk to anybody in the game, is the perfect recipe for running a football club. Brian Clough and Peter Taylor managed it in the 70s/80s with Nottingham Forest until Taylor’s Peripatetic leanings caused their split and, ultimately, Forest’s relegation.

Would Chavez sit idly by and tolerate the likes of Sebastian Squillaci as Arsenal got off to their worst start for 58 years? No, he would not. He would also provide the challenge that Arsene Wenger needs to lift himself out of this rut he’s found himself in. One need only look at what Chavez said about Barcelona president Sandro Rosell. “You are an imperialist pawn who attempts to curry favour with Danger Bush-Hitler, the number one mass murderer and assassin there is on the planet”, he said.

Does that sound like a man who would let Cesc Fabregas go for barely half his market value? I’m convinced he would get the most out of Wenger again and that long-awaited silverware would return to Highbury again. If not, it’s a car park or a hypermarket.

Viva La Revolución!

They say you can never go back.

As last season approached its dramatic denouement, giddy with excitement I decided to pick the best Manchester United XI of my time going to football matches (1988-present). Yes, these things are entirely subjective and mostly pointless but that doesn’t stop them being quite good fun. After due (or should that be Jew?) consideration, I went for Schmeichel in goal, a back four of Neville, Ferdinand, Stam and Irwin, a midfield comprising Ronaldo, Keane, Scholes and Giggs then Cantona and Van Nistelrooy up front. I picked substitutes too, primarily because I got carried away. On the bench then, Van Der Sar, Bruce, Vidic, Robson, Beckham, Solskjaer and Rooney. All under the watchful eye of Mike Phelan of course. It struck me that I really have been exceptionally lucky. No place in the squad for the likes of Cole, Kanchelskis, Evra, Sheringham, Fletcher or Yorke. Not the only notable omissions. I tweeted my verdict and immediately received a text from my brother, an Arsenal fan. ‘What about Hughes? You loved him as a kid.’ I did. I still do.

Now there is only one valid choice of favourite player for any United fan of my generation. King Eric. Le Dieu. But just as there is only one correct answer to the question, ‘who is your favourite Simpsons character?’ sometimes it’s worth thinking outside the box and determining a number two. And though he may not have even made my bench, best and favourite are not the same thing, and Sparky is unquestionably my Chief Wiggum.

Mark Hughes played for Manchester United from 1980 to 1986 then again from 1988 to 1995. During these two stints he notched up 467 appearances for the club and scored 163 goals. That tells the whole story in one sense but in another it tells you nothing. Those statistics are not the reason I loved the man and his tree trunk thighs. Age is a key factor. I am too young to remember Hughesy’s first spell at Old Trafford but his second neatly coincided with my burgeoning interest in the beautiful game.

One of my earliest sporting memories is the Welshman’s brace against Barcelona in the Cup Winners’ Cup Final of 1991. Both the competition and United’s goalkeeper on the day are no longer with us but to me it feels like yesterday. I can picture the second goal perfectly and regularly do. My mind’s eye always opts for the angle of the camera placed in the bottom right hand corner of the net. The ball breaks free, Sergio Busquets’ Dad (yes, really) comes charging out of his goal in those ridiculous tracksuit bottoms, Hughes knocks the ball past him but he’s gone too wide surely, Barry Davies thinks so, the 6 year old me thinks so, and then, from an impossible angle, bang, it nestles beautifully into that bottom corner. I didn’t know the game was against the former club at which he’d been deemed a failure, or that it was United’s first European trophy in 23 years, or that Barcelona were huge favourites on the night. It didn’t matter. Everything and everyone seems larger than life when you’re small and Leslie Mark Hughes seemed the biggest of the lot.

Fast forward to 1992. The inaugural Premier League season. I distinctly remember larking about with my toys on my own. In the next room my Dad is watching United take on Liverpool at Old Trafford. He had sat me in front of the European final but clearly decided a league game was less crucial in terms of building character. Still, the TV is on in here too even if I’m not focused on it. A cheer from the next room alerts me to the fact that United have pulled one back with ten minutes to spare. I look up and see it’s that man Hughes again. He’s lobbed Grobbelaar. It only dawns on me as I type this that it might just have been the first lob I ever saw. I put down Kermit and Fozzie and decide to watch the remainder of the game. Teams don’t come back from 2 goals behind surely? 90th minute. Diving header. Hughes, M.

Fast forward again, this time to 1994. I am by this stage an addict. I have seen lobs, headers, volleys, you name it. I’ve also seen my team win the title. As my Dad memorably told me ‘I’ve waited 26 years for this, you saw it in 2.’ I was blessed. And now United are on the verge double for the first time in their history. At this point I am well read on such matters and am aware of the fact that even the great Sir Matt Busby never managed to lead his side to the league and cup in the same season. Deep into extra time of the FA Cup semi-final and Oldham are 1-0 up. United look devoid of ideas. The ball is hopefully punted long, Oldham fail to clear, it hangs in the air for an eternity before Sparky strikes the sweetest volley you will ever see. Pandemonium in our household. We scream then run round the dining room table before collapsing in a bundle on the sofa in hysterics. He’ll hate me for mentioning this but it is the only time I can recall my brother celebrating a United goal before or since. Let the record show it was the goal that won the double. To this day if my team are behind late on I will implore them to ‘do an Oldham’.

We all have hundreds of such memories. People and places that perfectly evoke a time to which we can never return. Do I care that the lad from Wrexham went on to manage City? No. What I remember is my Dad’s VHS of the 1990 FA Cup final that I watched and rewatched at a time when live football on the TV was rare. Yet another double from Hughes. And the moment on the 92/93 season review video when Giggs skins his aging marker and the commentator says ‘it’s like a Mini trying to catch a Porsche’ then a pause as the young Welshman whips in a perfect cross for his compatriot to bury, concluding ‘and there’s the Rolls Royce waiting in the middle.’ Perhaps I think of those goals more often than the man himself, maybe that’s the nature of being a fan. Hughes was everything I’d like to be if I were a professional footballer and boy would I like to have been one. Strong, brave, a propensity towards scissor kicks and outrageous volleys that bordered on the staggering coupled with an incredible awareness and ability to hold the ball up. Calm and quiet off the field, quite the opposite on it. If my relationship with Wayne Rooney is much like Mad Men, almost impossible to love however hard I try, then Mark Hughes must be compared to The Sopranos. Pure, unadulterated enjoyment. And he had two spells for the club.

They say you can never go back. Fuck ‘em.

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You can find ‘Big Ask’ on twitter here.

As the news of Bébé slipping back out of the Old Trafford door with as little fuss as when he quietly slipped in, it begs the question; How has his transfer to Manchester United been so easily forgotten about? This was a player who was homeless a year or so before the signing, which is novel enough as a multi-million pound industry story. But on top of that, and here we may find the root of the answer we seek, his transfer to Manchester United had a distinctly ‘dodgy’ aroma to it.

The player was signed by Guimaraes for just half a packet of Rolos, then five weeks later, after a couple of pre-season games, they sold him to Manchester United for over £7m! Without Ferguson having ever seen him play! During the midst of a difficult financial period for Manchester United in which £7m wasn’t far off being their record transfer fee!

But why didn’t Manchester United, with their Portuguese scouting system and former assistant manager in charge of the Portuguese national team, just sign him for free a month earlier? Did he really make his mark during those pre-season friendlies?

But what’s this? Just before he completed this big-money transfer, he was suddenly poached from his existing agent by Portuguese ‘super agent’ Jorge Mendes, also responsible for the sales of Anderson, Ronaldo and Nani to Manchester United? A man who knows Alex Ferguson well? And he owned £30% of Bébé’s ‘economic rights’, so made about £3m out of the transfer for himself?

That sounds a bit suspicious. Has he ever been involved in Alex Ferguson paying over-the-odds for a Portuguese player before now then? What’s that? He handled negotiations directly with Alex Ferguson and Peter Kenyon for the sale of Ronaldo to Manchester United for £12.24m when Sporting had already accepted a bid from Arsenal for just £5.5m? An extra near-£7m? It sounds almost as if someone or other may have made the transfer happen purely for potential underhand personal financial gain.

As does this Bébé one.

Just like another Ferguson family member was once accused of doing on a BBC documentary. Which led to Ferguson blackmailing the BBC. Which he’s still doing. And coincidentally, no press agency is asking any questions about the potential for dodgy dealings behind this recent transfer.

Interesting…

Somebody did something naughty last year. But we shouldn’t be allowed to tell you what it is because they have a lot of money and have bought one of those things you’ve only heard of recently. But you can know who the other person involved was, sure, she’s not that rich anyway. The slag. And anyway, she probably tried to blackmail our poor hero and then sell her story to some grotty tabloid that insists on calling the police ‘cops’. Oh yes, we can say that about her – besmirch her character, and why not? She’s clearly the ‘bad guy’ here. And she’s not allowed to deny it! Or tell her side of the story at all, in fact, because she doesn’t have as much money. Result!

In the first instance, this may sound unfair to you, but really you just need to stop and think about it. What if the naughty boy was a premiership footballer? The poor soul has to go and run around in front of a crowd of partially-unsympathetic football fans. They might chant nasty things about him! How would he ever get over such a thing? It could well still be on his mind as he drove his Ferrari home to his multi-million pound mansion. What if he was still thinking about it that night when he was eating steak in a gourmet restaurant? Or, god forbid, weeks later, when he’s lying on a beach in Hawaii trying to recover from months of a health & safety-defying workload of running around in the fresh air for several hours a day? Not so sure now, are you?

And all this, before you even consider possibly the most important thing. His family. What if his wife and children were to find out about him betraying them with another woman? It would destroy them! Won’t somebody please think of the children! Surely the provision of a secure and supportive family unit is the responsibility of the press, the courts and most of all, the unrelated single woman who has callously slept with a married man. How can she ever look his wife and kids in the face again?

Obviously there are no totally innocent parties here, apart from our unnamed hero, but surely we can at least all learn a lesson from this…

They seem suspiciously happy to expose themselves to abuse and blame for results they can have little control over (compared to the players, at least). Even if they’re successful one season, that only gives their future-detractors ammunition with which to accuse them of having ‘lost it’ in following seasons when they inevitably struggle to achieve quite the same level of success. Ferguson and Wenger, two of the Premiership’s most successful managers, have certainly had their fair share of such accusations during less successful periods. It seems the only way to maintain a reputation as a good manager is to ditch your team as soon as you win anything with them and get out of the country.

But before we all start wearing ribbons for them, let’s not forget that, by regular standards, they do have a really, really, easy job. They never even have to run!  The ‘pressure’ they suffer surrounds their long-term decisions,  that can be made over hours, with advice from colleagues and underlings, in the pub, in the bath, in bed. Not like the players’ instant-result/consequence pressure on the pitch, which could more conceivably get to you ‘in the moment’ and cause some ill-advised (not-at-all-advised, to be fair to them) decisions like poor passing choices, over-zealous tackles or yellow cards for dissent.

So isn’t the role of manager, even with no transfer budget, stars sold, replacements touted, actually a pretty cushty job? Why should we feel sorry for them? ‘Aw, they’ve been treated badly’, ‘Made fools of in the public eye’, ‘Terrible pressure, terrible pressure’. These people (the ones we tend to hear about at least) are averaging £1m a year in wages. That’s almost £20,000 a week – not far off what a lot of the premier-league players (that we’ll never feel sorry for because ‘Look-how-much-money-they-make-it’s-a-joke’) earn.

But they have to work 80-odd hours a week! Including weekends! Poor darlings. The average football fan probably thinks about what their team needs to do/sign/sell/set-up/drop/promote for about half of that anyway. For free.

Which this week brings us to West Ham. Whatever could have enticed Avram Grant to the position that he ‘was advised by several people not to take’? Can anyone think what could possibly have possessed him? Despite the ‘terrible situation’ he knew he would find himself in at the currently-so-turbulent club? And why would any other sane person want to take over as manager of the club?

Admittedly, the way West Ham’s owners had touted Grant’s recently-vacated position to other managers behind their current employee’s back can’t have been much fun for him, and has already blown the club’s chances of getting Martin O’Neill on board. And did they think that sacking Grant minutes after the game that confirmed their relegation would do anything to help repair their image as Employers From Hell amongst the football-management community?

But the reality is that there will always be plenty of managers who are willing to take the position, however ‘difficult’ the circumstances, because it beats working for a living. Or punditry – which it turns out must be a lot harder than it looks, considering the ever-declining quality of ‘insight’ we’re fed these days from the BBC, Sky, or (god help us) ITV.

Maybe Grant’s instant-sacking was a move engineered to help the club’s long-suffering fans to release some of their considerable frustration in these disappointing times. We’d all like to be able to sack someone for not delivering our team to the Premiership title, Champions League & FA Cup treble, and the manager’s the only one you can’t sell, so why not? He gets his money, you get your fall guy. Everyone’s a winner.

But right after the game?

Maybe they just wanted to be able to get into the changing room before other Premiership suitors came calling for Scott Parker and offer him the job. Apparently he’s been taking the half-time team talks this year anyway, and I can’t see too many West Ham fans arguing with that appointment after the dogged performances he’s consistently turned in over the season. He’s a man that doesn’t crack under pressure, that much seems clear.

And coaching badges? We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!*

* Just ask Gareth Southgate.

Never a year goes by without the future of the current England manager and speculation over his potential replacements dominating at least one slow-sports-news week. It’s a go-to topic, like ‘Fabregas Wanted by Barcelona’, ‘Giggs is Really Quite Good, Have You Noticed?’ or ‘Terry Family Member Questioned by Police Over ——-‘

One of the recent speculators’ favourites, after getting Tottenham into the Champions League for the first time in their history, is the excitable Harry Redknapp.

On the one hand he seems to be a good man-manager, he’s tactically-competent, and has brought several teams from ‘lowly’ positions (as, in some cases, he’ll never tire of reminding us) to arguable over-achievement. And over-achievement is something the national side is yet to sample. You never know – they might like it – the media certainly would.

But for all his white-flag-waving at Manchester City, Harry also spends a lot of money to bring his teams success – not a luxury afforded to national managers – so would the quality at his disposal in the England set-up be enough to work his magic on? There’s certainly plenty there, with a decent crop of youth creeping in already, but would it be enough?

And would he be able to handle the ‘big personalities’? Harry’s got a bit of a history of falling out with players and though he’ll do his best to keep it internal, it’s pretty obvious when players like Bentley and Pavlyuchenko are only justifying big transfer fees by doing an extra-high-quality job of warming the bench. How would he react to being undermined by an ex-captain, or having a star-striker tell him to procreate off? And what if he, god forbid, froze-out a star player during a tournament? How would he handle the media-frenzy at every following draw or loss?

Perhaps the biggest loss he’d have to handle in moving to a high-profile team, would be his pressure-relieving tactic of telling everyone who’ll listen that his team don’t have a chance against their opponents but that they should just get credit for ‘having a go’. I’m not sure that kind of talk would be met with much sympathy when England lined-up against Denmark. Or Belgium. Or Liechtenstein.

It seems that Harry’s real talent really is, like many other lauded managers who suddenly lose all respect as soon as they fail to make the grade in a higher-expectation role (step forward Woy) getting the best out of average players. To take England to the next level we need someone who can get the best out of quality players. Someone the players ‘like’ purely out of fear of upsetting. And as far as I can see, there are only two working managers we’ve seen in the Premiership recently who fit that bill, and one’s far too Scottish to take the job.

I’m sorry to say it English-manager-demanders, it would be great if we had a home-grown manager capable of getting the results we’re all so desperate to finally achieve, but if we want to get anywhere with the current crop of Lamborghini-driving English talent, there’s only one man for the job. And he’s Portuguese.

Word filtering through the t’Interwebsphere is that Tottenham’s Niko Kranjcar’s notoriously chatty father, Zlatko Kranjcar has been engineering a swap deal with AS Roma’s Mirko Vucinic.

At least that is what ol’Zlato told Walter Sabatini…

Spurs manager Harry Redknapp has quite openly operated a culture of favourites at White Hart Lane, ever since his arrival. He’s a died in the wool East End boy who sticks with what he knows, sticks with who he knows. I don’t think Harry has ever felt he either knows or wants to know Niko. And I think that’s probably Tottenham’s loss.

But Mirko Vucinic is a €25M rated striker and even the most ardent Niko fan will acknowledge this sounds pretty good! But will it happen? Can Spurs be the first club in the history of football to make one of these insane media deals actually come true? Good question. In this instance, let’s hope so.

For Spurs, breaking the top four monopoly in 2009/10 was a momentous achievement. And with it came a highly rewarding Champions League campaign, taking in a thrilling victory over the holders, Inter Milan, before bowing out to Jose Mourinho’s Real Madrid.

There was little disgrace in losing to the battle Real – a side that cost hundreds of millions to assemble. Harry Redknapp, never slow to justify his occasional failures, will doubtless make the same point about the tussle they’ve just lost to Man City over that invaluable Champions League spot.

A year ago, a Peter Crouch header ensured it was Spurs who embarked on that voyage in to the stellar climes of the Champions League. Last night, his own goal confirmed that City will replace them. The form of Kenny Dalglish’s Liverpool means that Spurs may now miss out on the Europa League too.

There is an air of inevitability about City’s ascension – it would require remarkable mismanagement to spend that much money without any discernible success, and despite his conservative tactics Mancini is clearly no fool.

However, I wonder if Spurs fans feel a tad uneasy about how easily they’ve relinquished a prize they fought so hard to obtain. Granted, City have spent money, but Spurs had something more valuable: poll position. For the last twelve months, they have been a Champions League club, and City haven’t. In the summer, that advantage enabled Spurs to pull in big names – the likes of Rafael van der Vaart and William Gallas, both of whom have been inspired signings.

And yet, in January, Spurs were strangely inactive, moving only to snare Stephen Pienaar from Everton – a good player, but not one who was not evidently needed. The weakness in the Tottenham squad has been clear all season: they have lacked goals from their strikers. Whilst the likes of Bale and Van der Vaart have chipped in, Crouch, Defoe and Pavlyuchenko have been erratic. Robbie Keane was shipped out to West Ham on loan, where his poor form has continued. And yet nobody came in.

Tottenham did make a few haphazard deadline day moves, throwing money at half the clubs in La Liga in attempt to bring in the likes of Guiseppe Rossi, Fernando Llorente and Alvaro Negredo. But it was unplanned and unproductive.

It was also unusual for Harry Redknapp, a manager known for his transfer market acumen. Perhaps he wanted to escape the shackles of his ‘wheeler-dealer’ reputation. Perhaps the Spurs board were more interested in raking in the Champions League money than investing it in the squad.

Or perhaps they felt it was pointless, and that City’s riches meant they would perennially be fighting a losing battle.

Spurs lost the fight on the pitch last night. But in many respects, it was lost off the pitch in January. With City now having both the money and the status they desired, it looks a long way back for Tottenham.

The press enjoy the debate.  Sky’s Sunday Supplement’s hoard of pundits drool over their croissants the moment the subject comes up.  But does anyone else really care who wears the armband of the national team?

There are few neutrals who didn’t take pleasure in John Terry’s fall from grace a year ago.  The Wayne Bridge stories and subsequent removal of the armband were, let’s face it, funny.

However, the furore around returning the armband to Terry is nothing less than dull.  Let’s look at the bare facts: Rio Ferdinand and Steven Gerrard are both unavailable.  Terry is the natural choice to take the armband, and considering the injury records of his rivals, it probably makes sense to keep it there.

And does it really matter who wears the thing anyway?  In international football, captaincy has long since been a ceremonial role.  But even at club level it is becoming less significant.

Arsene Wenger has long suggested that the armband is a mere symbol – what matters is that the team shows collective leadership and responsibility.  Whilst his own side has generally failed to step up to that idealistic plate, it remains a salient thought.  And it’s not just a foreign school of thought: Alex Ferguson had no qualms about removing the armband from Ferdinand and placing it on Nemanja Vidic.  In the modern game, the iconic skipper has become an increasingly rare motif.

If you are going to create a fuss around a piece of cloth, you might be best to follow the example of Wales manager Gary Speed.  Whatever happens with Terry, he’s unlikely to remain a key component in the side beyond next summer’s European Championships.  In choosing Aaron Ramsey as his captain, Speed has brought stability and direction to his Wales side.

It’ll be interesting to see how their team-mates rally around the respective skippers this Saturday.

While I don’t really agree with Manchester United going into media lockdown after the Liverpool game, I can understand it. Alex Ferguson is short-tempered at the best of times and the defeat to Liverpool was painful and damaging. Coming just a few days after defeat to Chelsea and the Rooney elbow incident it’s the straw that broke the camel’s back.

The camel, let’s face it, wasn’t the strongest camel either. Its back was riddled with spina bifida and bone-rot. Still, I think United have done themselves, and the game, a bit of a disservice.

The more I see Jamie Carragher’s tackle the worse it gets. Nani is lucky in that he lifted his leg off the ground just before contact was made. Had he not, then I suspect the injury would have been far, far worse. The nasty gash on his leg might keep him out for a few weeks but he could easily have been out for months.

The ridiculousness of the system means that Carragher can’t be punished any further but United should have come out and condemned the tackle and how dangerous it was. Sure, Rafael made a bad tackle as well but there’s nothing to say they couldn’t have admitted that. It doesn’t take away from the fact that Carragher’s challenge is exactly the kind that the game should be ridding itself of.

That no retrospective punishment can be made is ludicrous in this era and regardless of what you might think of the United manager his words hold much weight. When we see incidents like Carragher’s challenge it’s important that they get the focus they deserve. Too often football and the media focus on the trivialities, like Nani crying, instead of the real issue.

There should be real debate on how to properly punish those kinds of dangerous tackles and on why FIFA can find the time to ban snoods while continuing to ignore video technology. By failing to publicly address those issues and going into lockdown, I think United are doing the wrong thing.

Ferguson should have immediately condemned the Carragher challenge and swallowed any criticism of the Rafael one. Then, perhaps, we’d be talking about important things, like how to prevent serious injury, instead of what appears to be another strop from the United manager.