ROLL up, roll up for the Anger Games.
The Premier League’s age of rage shows no sign of abating after a week when Nottingham Forest’s groundsman and Brentford’s goalkeeping coach were charged by the FA for a pre-match bust-up.
A few days earlier, two video analysts from Aston Villa and Arsenal were put up before the beak for a bout of fisticuffs in the Villa Park press box.
Then we all revelled in a “disrespect” spat between Brighton boss Roberto De Zerbi and Tottenham’s caretaker chief Cristian Stellini, which sounded like a mafioso blood feud scripted by Martin Scorsese, that started before kick-off and ended with both men red-carded.
So, the footballing week simply came to its natural conclusion at Anfield, on Sunday, when a steaming Andy Robertson confronted linesman Constantine Hatzidakis, who responded with an elbow to the Liverpool man’s throat.
With players, groundsmen, coaches, managers, caretakers and even two laptop-wielding tactics wonks all engulfed by red mist, it was only a matter of time before a linesman would choose to stick one on a fuming Glaswegian full-back.
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Sadly, Watford’s hooligan mascot Harry the Hornet is currently absent from the top flight but this man has previously started high-profile rumbles from inside a giant fluffy wasp costume.
We haven’t had a serious ballboy brawl since Eden Hazard, then at Chelsea, kicked off at a lad from Swansea.
And as for the Premier League’s tea ladies, there is an apparent anger deficiency in a department where boiling point seems such an obvious target.
Because pretty much everyone else involved in the top flight is permanently ranting and raging and, frankly, this is what the public demand.
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When Fulham striker Aleksandar Mitrovic received an eight-match ban — which the FA want to extend — for pushing referee Chris Kavanagh at Old Trafford last month, we were told the Serbian’s punishment would act as a deterrent.
Apparently, it was going to boost the FA’s Respect campaign, when the last thing anybody in English top-flight football actually wants is anybody showing anybody else any respect whatsoever.
‘What about those grassroots? What about the poor children?’ I hear you cry.
Well, any parent wishing to hold up anyone in professional football as a role model should be automatically referred to social services.
No, what we want are more hissy fits, more bouts of the screaming abdabs, more weapons-grade “passion” to prove that the outcome of Premier League football matches matters more than dear life itself.
Why pay through the nose for subscription TV if this stuff isn’t getting people consistently wound-up beyond all reason?
What football really needed was for a linesman to join in and give as good as he got.
When they talk about replacing assistant refs with robot linesmen, surely these droids — in the spirit of Hatzidakis — should be armed like Robocop or the Terminator?
Since the Mitrovic flashpoint, incidents of players aggressively surrounding referees and laying hands on officials only seems to have increased.
While no other culprit has been a big burly Serb with a mistaken reputation for thuggishness, the rest have got off scot-free.
Hatzidakis may have been stood down pending an FA investigation but his violent retaliation is a boon to the Premier League’s great global soap opera, as it will be debated with worldwide wonderment.
What was the most-talked about weekend incident?
Erling Haaland’s bicycle kick? That Matheus Nunes thundercracker for Wolves against Chelsea?
Mo Salah’s penalty miss in Liverpool’s 2-2 draw with Arsenal?
Of course not. It was the extraordinary sight of a linesman tw*tting a player.
We are indebted to Roy Keane — employed by Sky Sports as an ill-tempered caricature to ensure outrage levels never drop below acceptable standards — for pointing out, at half-time and full-time, that Robertson acted like “a big baby”.
Keane, who frequently led baying mobs of Manchester United players intimidating match officials during his playing days, clearly didn’t believe Robertson had been manly enough when provoking Hatzidakis.
Study footage of Keane in his pomp and you will see proper eye-bulging fury.
Note the veins in the Irishman’s temples seemingly ready to rip.
Those were proper full-on adult strops.
None of your Robertson-style dummy-spitting toddler tantrums.
One of the game’s greatest con-jobs was the idea VAR would increase respect towards refs and calm tempers. Mostly, we used to accept referees were fallible humans without eyes in the back of their heads.
Now that we’ve got men in Stockley Park poring over countless replays of every major incident, football demands forensic justice and gets more furious than ever when those heightened expectations are not met.
Instead, we get Howard Webb apologising to Wolves and Brighton every alternate Monday — while people still bleat on about officials “lacking consistency” when all of them consistently do over Wolves and Brighton.
And we get the FA’s disciplinary department jammed up by flare-ups between increasingly unlikely members of club staff.
It took five months for the FA to conclude a probe into the altercation between Forest groundsman Ewan Hunter and coach Manu Sotelo, after a disagreement over the length of Brentford’s warm-up at the City Ground in November.
Because why wait for the opening whistle before you can start getting extremely annoyed?
Even the tactics boffins aren’t immune. Arsenal’s “technical analyst coach” Miguel Molina apparently blew a kiss at Villa’s “head of performance analysis” Victor Manas after a late Gunners goal in February, sparking a physical brawl in an area once reserved for boring-old media neutrality.
Stop rattling on about “expected goals”, please boys. Give us the stats for expected fights.
Still, after the mild-mannered and emotionally intelligent Graham Potter was inevitably sacked by Chelsea, we realised the Premier League’s one true cardinal sin.
The crime of not being angry enough.
Blues in a jam now
I KNOW most of you believe that all members of the football media congregate en masse to enjoy Christmas dinner with the extended Lampard-Redknapp family every year.
But despite this supposed chumminess, I can’t honestly suggest that Frank Lampard’s return as Chelsea’s caretaker manager — just before a Champions League quarter-final against Real Madrid — will do any good for either club or boss.
I do, though, love the idea of James Corden advising Chelsea supremo Todd Boehly to give the gig to Lampard, who is famously loathed by Corden’s fellow West Ham fans.
Corden’s Carpool Karaoke phenomenon, where the likes of Madonna, Paul McCartney and Michelle Obama sing along with Big Jimmy in his motor, should now be adapted for the Stamford Bridge dugout, where A-list celebrities get to manage Chelsea on a short-term basis to generate viral internet content.
Erl’s Gunner win it all
AFTER 44 goals in 38 matches for Manchester City, it would be a travesty if Erling Haaland is not crowned the FWA’s Footballer of the Year and PFA Player of the Year — whether Manchester City win the Treble or nothing at all.
Individual awards are exactly that and, while leaders Arsenal have several excellent candidates, suggestions that any of Mikel Arteta’s Gunners have had a bigger impact on the season than Haaland are nonsense.
Roy’s a boy
VETERAN Roy Hodgson’s outstanding return to Crystal Palace — with his previously-toothless team notching two wins and seven goals in two matches — represents a significant blow against ageism.
Joe Biden, five years older than Hodgson, is the most powerful man in the world.
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He has his finger on the nuclear button — and will seek re-election as US President shortly before his 82nd birthday next year.
So the idea that a 75-year-old might have struggled to bring the best out of Eberechi Eze was pretty low-grade by comparison.
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
