Fitba Hell

Gary Megson must be the most spectacularly short-sighted manager of all time.

With a chance of winning the UEFA Cup - a competition the club had celebrated gaining entry into with gusto last year - he chose to field a reserve team against Sporting Lisbon last month. Not surprisingly, Lisbon won. Megson had prioritised escaping relegation from the Premier League, and rested his best players for that challenge.

What a blunder: winning a European trophy makes a manager and his team a semi-mythical part of their club's history, revered down the ages. Look at the misty-eyed reflection in Aberdeen newspapers just now as the 25th anniversary of the Dons' European Cup Winners' Cup pumping of Real Madrid approaches; consider the reverence in which Celtic's Lisbon Lions are held, or the fond memories of the club's run to the UEFA Cup final in 2003 (against the blurring of one league title into the memory of another); Brian Clough's extraordinary success with Nottingham Forest reverberates down the years more than his almost equally remarkable achievements with Derby County - because Forest won the European Cup twice, and County never did.

You blew it, Megson. You had a shot at leading Bolton to the greatest day in their history, being remembered as a club legend. Now your best chance is to be the workaday manager who once just about kept the club clear of relegation one season - and even that looks unlikely.

No one batted an eyelid the other night when, after Theo Walcott's amazing run to set up Arsenal's equaliser against Liverpool, one TV pundit chose instead to focus on the apparent stupidity of the defender who could have pulled Walcott down to prevent the goal.

A couple of days earlier, one fan each from Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester United are assembled on Radio 5 to discuss their team's chances in the Premier League, only to start lobbing wit-free jibes of a level I last heard during a nursery school spat.

No one at United, Chelsea or Manchester City seems to be at all bothered about the dodgy backgrounds of Messrs Glazer, Abramovich or Shinawatra - not while their teams are winning anyway.

Robbie Fowler was widely castigated a few years back for revealing a t-shirt with a message for Liverpool's striking dockers; there's a nervousness among club owners and pundits alike when football and politics start to mix.

For years we were fed the line by much of a shameless media that sectarian abuse spat out by Old Firm fans was just working men getting a bit of frustration off their chests - no harm in it, doesn't mean anything.

There's a common link to the above: football is routinely allowed to exist outwith the standards of behaviour, morality and difficult questions that make up real life.