Ian Herbert: Players do as manager says – not as he does

You have to say he has to point. Manchester United are, as Sir Alex Ferguson suggests, not in the habit of surrounding referees in the way that Chelsea are and for evidence consider Tomasz Kuszczak's dismissal in the FA Cup against Portsmouth this month.

The keeper's contact with Milan Baros was not substantial and Kuszczak's sending-off the kind of decision which – though appropriate – would have had other teams swarming around an official. Wayne Rooney was on the spot but he, of all people, walked away.

If only Ferguson followed the lead his players set, referees might not find Old Trafford such a forbidding place. He vented his spleen after the Portsmouth match, while his assistant, Carlos Queiroz, retracted comments suggesting Martin Taylor was a violent player.

It was the same story when United lost at Bolton, when Ferguson said of the Premier League Referees head, Keith Hackett: "He has a lot to answer for. He is not doing his job properly. He has to be assessed. Hackett is in a comfortable position and does nothing."

Ferguson served a touchline ban for those comments which, for Hackett, were more undermining than anything a mob of players might throw his way.

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