It’s simply impossible to give our woeful refs any respect

David Mellor
24 Sep 2008

Where is the Football Association's Respect campaign going? Anyone at Stamford Bridge on Sunday will have no hesitation in saying, nowhere.

Referee Mike Riley booked seven Manchester United players and though Sir Alex Ferguson was right to say there weren't any really bad tackles, there was plenty of indiscipline among his team.

Especially from Rio Ferdinand, who for the second season running stormed off the pitch in a rage, though this time without injuring a female steward or damaging the stadium.

In fact, Ferdinand has nothing to complain about; his last-second assault on Didier Drogba should have led to a second yellow but Riley took no action and didn't mention Ferdinand in his post-match report. As a result, United have only been fined £25,000 which shows that in today's Premier League, disrespect comes cheap.

One of the problems with the Respect campaign is that in rational democratic societies, respect has to be earned and can't be imposed. Riley is pathetic, almost devoid of authority, and if the FA think they can turn him into a widely-respected figure, they're nuts.

At Watford last weekend a 25-year-old referee, Stuart Attwell, regarded as the great hope of English refereeing, awarded a goal that never was.
Referees' supremo Keith Hackett, having slapped down Mark Halsey the week before over sending off John Terry, has done a complete volte-face over Attwell and is desperate to defend the indefensible.

Hackett is trying to blame it all on linesman Nigel Bannister but that won't wash because Attwell has a pair of eyes too. Whatever his colleague signalled, Attwell should have seen the ball was nowhere near the goal when Bannister made his mistake.

Are Hackett's antics worthy of Respect, any more than Attwell's were? I hardly think so. I can, of course, understand his desire not to hang a young referee out to dry, because he wants more volunteers.

But that shows how flawed FA thinking about their campaign is.

Most referees won't get respect from players or managers because they never played the game. Yet there are plenty of ex-professionals who would be glad to be fast tracked into a refereeing career and who would surely have a better chance of commanding genuine respect.

Then there's the inevitable question about foreigners. If it's okay to have overseas players, managers and owners, why not a few foreign referees? Some of Europe's finest enticed into the Premier League would do a great deal to lift the standards here.

Which brings me back to the nub of the problem. Most referees don't get respect for the simple reason they are not very good.

And the absence of technology to help them means even the best will be humiliated several times a season by getting major decisions wrong.
While that continues, the Respect campaign is doomed to failure, like almost everything else the FA do.

Judges call Tevez right but reasoning leaves bitter taste

No objective person should feel sorry for West Ham over the Carlos Tevez affair. Allowing themselves to be manipulated by Kia Joorabchian was always going to end in tears, and the only surprising thing is that it has taken so long.

What is bizarre, though, is some of the tribunal's reasoning. How can anyone, let alone a
cricket-loving judge, however distinguished, decide what would have happened in a football match if a particular player had not been on the pitch.

On that basis, the Barnsleys of this world would never beat one of the Chelseas but sometimes they do. The right result, then, but for the wrong reasons.

• Like the rumble of distant thunder, I can hear the wheels of the tumbrel coming to take Juande Ramos away. But if the White Hart Lane board guillotine the Spaniard, or sit on their hands while his confidence is so undermined he feels he has to quit, no good will come of it.

Tottenham, already on the brink of being a laughing stock, will simply be written off as a metropolitan version of Newcastle. And who would take the job anyway?

Only the desperate will want to be yet another fall guy in the club's seemingly endless parade of failed coaches.

FIA are finished

Why is life so predictable? Cynics have long suggested the FIA cannot be trusted to be judge and jury in their own cause and their ruling on Lewis Hamilton proves it.

Whatever he did wrong at the Belgian Grand Prix, he corrected way before the race was over, and it is absurd to declare as winner a driver who was never at any point ahead in the race.

Formula One needs professional stewards and new disciplinary arrangements that command respect. It is not only Max Mosley who should be standing down next year; the FIA as a whole should bow out as well.

Throw in the towel on Bog standard Brits

After the success of the Beijing Olympics, British sport came down to earth with a bump last weekend, not so much at Valhalla but at Wimbledon.

Some gutless performances by Alex Bogdanovic and eccentric captaincy by John Lloyd have relegated us Brits to the Jules Verne equivalent of the Davis Cup; 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

I find it hard to contain my contempt for Bogdanovic who was beaten in the decisive rubber by an Austrian journeyman ranked two places below him. When are the Lawn Tennis Association going to give up on him?

Lloyd seems determined to be an even worse Davis Cup captain than he was a player. Why didn't he heal the rift with Josh Goodall, who would have given a far better account of himself?

And why didn't he play Andy Murray in the doubles, which were always going to be decisive?
Speaking after this fiasco, Murray sounded totally fed up and you can't blame him. It would serve Lloyd, and the LTA idiots, right if Murray walks away for good. I would.

Lloyd, who deserved a pasting in the press didn't get one, while Nick Faldo, who didn't deserve one, did.

Of course Faldo is difficult but apart from backend loading the singles, I am not sure what he did wrong.

In reality, the Unites States were due a win. Maybe their triumphalism is a small price to pay if the win has rekindled American interest in an event some of their stars wanted to abandon. Roll on Celtic Manor.