Beauty and the Beast: life as we know it at Old Trafford

REFEREEING decisions have been the dominant topic in much of European football for a fortnight, not least thanks to Michel Platini’s various amusing interventions.

But it’s all so much in the eye of the beholder, isn’t it? Here’s one possible intro to United v Bolton: ‘The Beauty And The Beast of the modern Man United was seemingly perfectly summed up in our two Saturday goal-strikes by Roo and Ron. The twist being that the true beauty is provided by one of our ugliest and least couth players of all time, whilst the self-basting Narcissus worshipped on a million bedroom walls spurts bestial evil from every pore when he cheats the ref, and football, like this.’

Well, that would be the Manichean view of it, and it was certainly one put forward by most media commentators and ABU fans on Saturday evening. And yet, viewing exactly the same incident live, and then its press box replays, the two best-selling British papers (The Sun and News Of The World) were both agreed that Ronnie couldn’t have done anything to avoid going down, and that all available buckets of the smelly stuff should be retained for tipping over Rob Styles instead.