The news came via a press release from Burnley’s media department. “Burnley FC Tops FA Respect Table,” was the headline, announcing the award of a £20,000 prize for having the best record in the top division last season when it came to fair play and understanding, under the guidance of Sean Dyche, that influencing or deceiving the referee should not be thought of as just another skill or tactic.
Nobody should be surprised when Dyche’s ethos is that his players give everything, tackle hard and never shirk a challenge, but also that they do things the right way. Dyche does not tolerate diving. He does not like his players back-chatting with referees – a legacy, undoubtedly, of Brian Clough being his mentor as a young professional at Nottingham Forest – and his own conduct is a significant reason why Burnley have come out on top in a points system that takes into account more than just red and yellow cards.
If it had been purely about disciplinary statistics, Liverpool would have finished top and another four clubs – Swansea City, Bournemouth, Tottenham Hotspur and Southampton – would have been above the team from Turf Moor. Yet Burnley beat them all on the basis that points are lost for disputing decisions, badgering officials and other examples of broken-down professionalism. The managers and their coaching staff are also assessed in every game. The FA has awarded the prize money to the Burnley FC in the Community programme and the people running the club are entitled to feel pleased with themselves.
“I am delighted that we have been named as the Premier League ‘Respect’ award winners for last season,” the chairman, Mike Garlick, said. “This backs up our community ethos off the pitch while, on it, the award is gauged on a points basis, with criteria such as respect to match officials, opposing players and our disciplinary record. This is the third time in four seasons we have won such an award.”
The strange part, however, is that we may never see a full version of the fair‑play table. Plenty of us would like to know who else adhered to the Respect campaign and, likewise, who didn’t. Yet the FA is refusing to share it. In fact, the relevant people at FA headquarters give the impression they are guarding it with their lives – and, if that seems strange, it becomes even more unsatisfactory to learn this is to protect the clubs with the worst records.
I know all this because on Friday I asked the FA where I might locate this league table for an article I was writing about Burnley. The initial response was that it would be forwarded to me, no problem, but then it went silent. Instead, several hours later a statement from the FA’s media department was emailed to declare, four days after the announcement from Turf Moor, that Burnley had won the 2016-17 award – but with no table. To a follow-up call, I was told there was never an actual fair‑play table in place and it was no longer decided through a ranking system, which was perplexing, to say the least, when Burnley had just won £20,000 for finishing top of this nonexistent league.
Some more calls ensued and, finally, after a rather painful day of going back and forth, the FA came back to say further inquiries had revealed the fair-play league (the one it had claimed never existed) could not be shared because of a policy to protect the worst offenders from negative publicity or difficult questions – and stop the focus being on the clubs who had been outed for poor behaviour.
Protect them? Nobody is asking for the relevant managers to be put in stocks and publicly humiliated but it seems extraordinarily weak that the organisation in charge of the Respect campaign is so cowed by the clubs it feels unable to reveal how the clubs ranked.
Would it not be more effective in the long run if the FA actually published the table to identify the clubs who devoted the most time to arguing about refereeing decisions and trying to influence the match officials? Might it not persuade those clubs that something ought to change? Why protect the people who have, in short, not done enough to support the campaign? And here’s an idea: why not bring in a fines system for the clubs who finish in the bottom three? Publicise it – let the clubs explain for themselves, the grown-up way.
The answer to all these questions, I strongly suspect, is that the FA is frightened of taking on the relevant clubs and some of the people it would involve. Liverpool, for example, had 54 yellow cards last season, compared with Burnley’s 64, to record the best disciplinary statistics in the Premier League. Jürgen Klopp’s team also went through the entire league season without a single sending-off, whereas Ashley Barnes and Jeff Hendrick were both dismissed for Burnley. So how did Liverpool not take the prize when they were so far ahead in disciplinary points? Might it be something to do with the way Klopp behaves in the dugout and the tirades he occasionally unleashes on the fourth official? Did the Anfield club lose points because of Klopp himself?
Ironically, I do have a copy of the Premier League’s fair-play table from the 2014‑15 season when there was a category, “positive play”, to encompass diving and time-wasting and various other parts of the game the authorities want to eradicate. That table is particularly revealing because of what it says about the champions, Chelsea, in José Mourinho’s second stint of management at Stamford Bridge. Chelsea were bottom of the players’ respect-to-referees column and only marginally better, one place up, in the category that assessed the behaviour of the managers and backroom staff, judging everything from how they behaved in the technical areas to what they said in press conferences.
The only manager to be deducted more points than Mourinho was Gus Poyet, then at Sunderland, and the previous season Chelsea had the joint worst record with Southampton and Mauricio Pocchetino, followed by Stoke City and Mark Hughes. Three years on, do the latest figures show more of the same with Mourinho, a repeat offender, with Manchester United? And, if so, why can the FA not be bold enough to say so?
Not just Mourinho, either. United were 15th out of 20 clubs in disciplinary terms last season with 77 yellows and two reds, far removed from the days when Sir Alex Ferguson liked to boast the club always came out well in the fair-play charts. Yet Manchester City (71 yellows, four reds) were another two places down, above only West Ham, Hull City and Watford, and Pochettino, again, might not have done brilliantly, either. Spurs, like Liverpool, also had better disciplinary statistics than Burnley in terms of bookings and red cards – yet ended up behind them once the other marks were deducted.
Unfortunately we will probably never know the exact positions, and why, and that is the way the FA wants to keep it. Indeed, when I asked whether it would be possible to see the areas in which Dyche had excelled it was explained that would not be possible, either. The FA, no kidding, did not want to run the possibility of getting complaints from the clubs who had not scored so impressively. Kudos to Burnley for their latest achievement but if the FA really wants teams to improve their behaviour, on and off the pitch, perhaps it should use its own buzzword, stop covering up for the guilty clubs and respect everyone enough to share the truth.
Don’t go knocking Fall guy Smith
It was sad to see Mark E Smith had to pull out of two concerts last week because of his deteriorating health, leading to an announcement from his bandmates, just before they were due to go on stage in Bristol, that he was too unwell even to leave the hotel.
Every record collection should contain at least one album from the Fall and, as well as all that wonderful Salfordian belligerence he has shown over the years, I always had extra respect for Smith because of the way he used to go to football at a time when the music industry used to look down its nose at the sport – back in the days, to quote the man himself, when Manchester City felt like a commune for “30,000 miserable gets”.
Someone at the BBC obviously has good taste judging by the fact an instrumental version of Theme from Sparta FC became the backdrop for Final Score. Smith was even invited to read out the classified results one Saturday in 2005, his Broughton accent certainly striking a different tone to that of James Alexander Gordon as he let the nation know Manchester United had won at Charlton and City had managed a goalless draw at home to Blackburn Rovers. “Hopeless, as usual.”
His band has been going for more than 40 years now and you have to admire a lyricist who can shoehorn in references to George Best, “Marble Millichip” (Bert, presumably) and a fictional sports reporter by the name of Pat McGatt, as Smith did in Kicker Conspiracy in the early 1980s.
“You couldn’t mention football in the rock world then,” Smith recalled in an interview with When Saturday Comes some years later. “We were on Rough Trade and I told them: ‘This is about football violence.’ It was all: ‘You don’t go to football, do you?’ I remember Melody Maker saying: ‘Mark Smith’s obviously got writer’s block having to write about football.’ About five years later, the same guy reviewed something else saying it was a load of rubbish and ‘nowhere near the heights of Kicker Conspiracy’. And now, of course, all the old music hacks are sat in the directors’ box with Oasis.”
What if Pep was given a talking-to?
There is one way, in theory, to test the idea that José Mourinho would have been treated differently to Pep Guardiola if it had been the Manchester United manager marching on to the pitch after the final whistle to applaud, berate, manhandle and – if you have read some of the hysteria over the last few days – very nearly kidnap an opposition player.
It would certainly be fun to see the response if Manchester City are beaten at Old Trafford next Sunday and Mourinho felt it necessary to pick out a player in blue – Raheem Sterling, say – to tell him how gifted he was, then start prodding and haranguing him for not doing better on the day.
Alternatively, what if an opposition player were to appear in Guardiola’s face after a last-minute defeat for City, pronounce his admiration for the manager and then start all that other funny business, waving his arms about like a man fighting off a swarm of invisible bees? Something tells me Pep’s sympathisers might not be so understanding as they have been over the last few days.
Let’s not go overboard, though. At least Guardiola has accepted he broke a form of managerial etiquette and that he regrets all that silliness with Nathan Redmond after the game against Southampton. It was odd, to say the least, but so is the FA’s request for an explanation when both Guardiola and Redmond have already offered one. What is the governing body actually considering here? A charge of misconduct for flattery?
