So, you are Steve McClaren, an ex-Manchester United employee recently promoted to England head coach, and you have spent your first few weeks in the job meeting leading Premiership managers to reassure them you want to work with them rather than against them.
You play your first game at Old Trafford and win with embarrassing ease against the reigning European champions, re-establishing the integrity of friendly internationals involving England in the process, so at long last you can look Sir Alex Ferguson squarely in the eye and maybe even get the old curmudgeon to admit your post-Manchester career hasn't turned out too badly after all.
Not so fast, son. There's just one teeny problem. Fergie is hopping mad at losing his star striker for three of the first games of the season and he reckons it's all your fault. Perhaps not you personally, but the way it looks from Manchester the Football Association, and no one else, are responsible for Wayne Rooney's three-match ban following his dismissal in a friendly in Amsterdam. Even the argument that the player himself bears some of the blame does not wash with an incandescent Ferguson, who can point out that Steven Gerrard was sent off in the same tournament three years ago yet escaped with no domestic penalty at all.
So, Steve, how do you answer the charge that the FA are anti-United and pro-Liverpool? And who does Brian Barwick support again? McClaren has absolutely no defence to any of the above charges except to plead ignorance and innocence, and make sure - here's a trick he might have learned from Fergie - that everyone hears him doing so.
'The Rooney decision has not made my job any easier, in terms of building relationships with the clubs,' he lamented, in what should have been his hour of glory on Wednesday evening. 'I don't want to criticise anyone, but decisions like that make my job very, very difficult. This was a decision made by someone at the FA I don't know, certainly not Brian Barwick or any department near me, and it's affected United, England and the player. Of course that hasn't made my job any easier. It disappoints me.'
When McClaren says the suspension has affected England he was most likely referring to the pre-match stance Rooney and his representatives had taken. This story will run and run and it has already highlighted the delicate relationship between the clubs and the FA and the light it sheds on the inner workings of the labyrinthine governing body. This case has a lot to tell us about the way English football is run. Put simply, even as McClaren was making all the right noises and getting off to a promising start, the FA was powerless to prevent their new coach's credibility being undermined by his own organisation.
The essential difference between Rooney's treatment and that of Gerrard was that the Liverpool player was sent off for two yellow cards and FA regulations do not demand a first-team suspension in such a case. However, Neil Mellor was sent off for violent conduct in the same game and escaped because, unlike this time, the Dutch referee did not send in a report. The blame for inconsistency here might lie mostly with the Dutch, though clearly had the FA been so minded they could have used the precedent to take a more relaxed view about Rooney's dismissal in a friendly. Instead the referee's report was passed to the disciplinary department, which set a train of events in motion.
When United appealed against the red card for violent conduct and the ban that would inevitably follow, a disciplinary committee was set up. McClaren is not fibbing when he says he has no idea who arrived at the decision to uphold the violent conduct charge and confirm a three-match ban, because very few people do know. The disciplinary department prides itself on the anonymity and complete independence of its procedures. All that can safely be said is that the decision to uphold Rooney's suspension for violent conduct, not one that was persuasively supported by the video evidence, would have been arrived at by three or four people. At least one of member of the committee would have been an ex-player or referee, but others might have no involvement at all with the professional game.
Imagine having to explain that to an irate Ferguson. Common sense and unofficial practice around the world demands that the spirit of pre-season friendlies should apply to their disciplinary complications as well. Having a leading player miss three of his club's first four matches because of a reckless moment in a warm-up game is ludicrous. It would not happen in too many other countries. No one is suggesting Rooney is innocent or that rules should be bent to favour big clubs like United, but Fergie was within his rights to expect some sort of compromise.
Much to McClaren's dismay, the FA did not have the flexibility or the foresight to bend even a little. The fact that Gary Neville sounds like His Master's Voice these days does not mean he does not have a valid point. 'I don't think the people at the FA understand their own disciplinary system,' the Manchester United captain said. 'Why they couldn't just throw the report in the bin I don't know.'
