Who’s the human in the black?

For many years, football referees have complained of being silenced. But if the card sharps are not to be blunted entirely, it is becoming increasingly clear that the gags must stay on.

In a week that David Moyes finally began to look like a Manchester United manager; masterminding opening goals via the unsteadiness of Ashley Young and Antonio Valencia’s invisibility cloak; ex-Premier League ref Mark Halsey demonstrated the precision timing you might expect to tell of his fulfilling textual relationship with Alex Ferguson.

In the serialisation of his upcoming book Added Time; Halsey also writes of his friendship with Jose Mourinho, who paid for a family holiday in the Algarve when the referee’s wife was recovering from cancer.