Mark Clattenburg, England's top referee now that Howard Webb has retired, has undoubtedly ruffled a few feathers in the course of a bumpy, if successful career. With Webb's retirement after the World Cup, the Geordie ref is widely seen as the country's senior referee, although Michael Oliver is a younger referee probably more suited to the bosses at PGMOL, the Premier League's referees' organisation run by Mike Riley.
But events of the last couple of days present a clear threat to Clattenburg's status and reveal that there are some senior people in the world of refereeing who do not like Clattenburg and will stop at little to prevent him from stepping into Webb's shoes.
Last Saturday, Clattenburg did not follow the guidelines laid down by PGMOL for match days to the letter. The Premier League has, in somewhat cowardly fashion, refused to justify or state why it is penalising Clattenburg.
But information has emerged in newspapers -The Sun and Daily Mail - which both have top ex-referees, Mark halsey and Graham Poll, wriitng for them. Was the information leaked to them, either by someone in the Premier League or someone else? We'll never know.
What we do know is that Clattenburg did not, as is advised by PGMOL, drive to a Birmingham city centre hotel before the West Mromwich Albion-Crystal Palace game. It's now deemed unadvisable for match officials to turn up at a stadium in their own cars - for their own safety as much as anything else - and so they meet up at a hotel and are driven to the ground in a people carrier.
Well Clattenburg had an Ed Sheeran concert to go on Saturday night and didn't want to hang around after the game driving back to Birmingham, when he could be quickly back on the motorway up north.
So he drove his car to The Hawthorns and left in it after the game. I imagine the ground was empty and deserted by that point. There's not much to hang around for in that part of the city.
We don't know if he cleared this with anyone. It seems not or I doubt if he would have been punished. But someone told on him.
To compound the damage, it appears that Clattenburg answered his mobile phone to Palace manager Neil Warnock. Now that's a mistake at the best of times but Warnock clearly wanted to rant and rave a bit more about Clattenburg's performance. Whether the conversation lasted 10 seconds (Thanks Neil, but I'nm driving and I can't talk about this anyway) or longer, we don't know, but again this information has found its way to the Premier League, which decided to make an example of their most senior referee and dump him from theis weekend's fixtures, althugh he will still be welcome to referee in a Champions League game in Europe.
Clattenburg has had run ins in the past, but has always come through them with his name cleared. It appears that he has made enemies in the Premier League, however,
But it strikes me as the height of stupidity to dump on your leading referee from a great height for some of the most minor infractions that exist. If he's got any sense, Clattenburg will grit his teeth and accept the punishment. He'll be back in the pitch in a week's time and he can just store it away for his memoirs.
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