The Da Fergy Code

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By Boris Mellor
April 21 2005

Can you imagine the hysteria if an Arsenal player kicked the ball deliberately at the crowd as Neville did tonight against Everton?

Can you imagine the condemnation from the rednosed one? Well he had his chance tonight to condemn such behaviour - except it was his own team. But of course he is not prepared to condemn poor discipline when it is his own players involved - except in code. So he appears to crticise, but not really.

So Neville' sending off is dealt with in this manner.

Sir Alex on Sky Sport News: "You cant kick the ball at the crowd (pause) not nowadays"

This is the Alex famous expert interpretation of the rule gambit, so as to soften the blow. He is not really criticising Neville. It assumes that there was a time when you could kick the ball at the crowd. Its just that the game has gone soft. There was a time, good old days, when you could kick the ball at the crowd, but poor old Neville failed to spot the change in rules.

So Alex is not criticising his man for violent conduct, but failure to keep up to date with rule changes. Meanwhile poor hard done by Scholes got a second yellow for a late tackle. More code, it was so late that the ball was no where near. Also the tackle was high and reckless, but Sir Alex turns it into a minor event (plus his man was already on a yellow, so he needed to be more careful).

As his team performs more poorly, and Keane's rantings fail to spur them on, so we can expect more loss of discipline, and more of the da Fergy code.