James Lawton: Beckham's celebrity is no excuse for FA's inaction

There are two forms of football justice. One is hard and the other soft. The hard form is invariably directed at soft targets. And vice versa

In any ranking of the black art of throwing the elbow, which has recently been selected as the football crime over which match officials must be most vigilant, David Beckham is plainly no better than mid-table.

The one he threw at Lee Bowyer on Saturday had none of that devilish, Keanesque flourish which recently persuaded Manchester United to fine their captain two weeks' wages, and only freakish misfortune could have led to damage comparable to when Wimbledon's John Fashanu –- otherwise known as Fash the Bash – wrecked the eye socket of Tottenham's Gary Mabbutt.

However, all forms of elbowing are despicable and inflammatory and the fact that Beckham, who threw his arms up in mock bewilderment when the play was stopped, appears to be getting away without even a tap in the vicinity of his occasionally varnished fingernails contains one mystery and several unfortunate truths.

The mystery is why the referee, Jeff Winter, stopped the play. Beckham's offence was to shove his elbow into Bowyer's face – the body language could hardly have been more explicit – and the punishment for this, it has been decreed, is dismissal. Winter apparently saw the foul but deemed it mild enough not to warrant anything more than the awarding of a free-kick.

Yesterday's news that the Football Association would not be reviewing the video evidence – on the technicality that the referee had seen the offence and responded to it, however tepidly – thus formally attached to this disturbing little mystery those old truths.

Both of them are enshrined in FA tradition. One is that referees should be exposed only as an absolutely last resort. The other is that there are two forms of football justice. One is hard and the other is soft. The hard form is invariably directed at soft targets. And, of course, vice versa.

Being captain of England makes you a difficult target, as Alan Shearer realised when he inflicted his shocking tackle on the then Leicester City player, Neil Lennon. Some thought Shearer's tackle was a pitiless example of both arrogance and cruelty. Others were not so sure.

The point, however, was that at the very least there was a case to answer – right up to the moment Shearer delivered his ultimatum that if the FA prosecuted it could forget about his services in Euro 2000. Naturally, the FA caved in.

Now England are heading towards another European Championship and Beckham is considered a cornerstone of Sven Goran Eriksson's effort to revive the team that shuffled so ingloriously out of the recent World Cup. Based on current form, you may think this estimate of Beckham's worth to the cause to be hopelessly optimistic, but there is no getting around it: Beckham's celebrity has made him bigger than the game. It is a reality which is forlornly augmented by events over the last couple of days.

Some will always believe that Beckham's selection for the World Cup, while plainly a long way from anything like adequate fitness, was based on factors other than his ability to get through the tournament. This is ferociously denied by the FA and Eriksson, but, whatever the validity of the suspicion that his membership of the squad in the Far East had something to do with his huge commercial appeal, it will be fanned at least a little by his escape from the usual consequences of elbowing an opponent in the face.

The big problem is the message sent out by the inaction. To whom do the rules really apply and, when the authorities cry for new levels of accountability in all corners of the game, does this include the most protected of all forms of football life, the referee? In the case of Keane and his public admission that he deliberately sought to injure Alf Inge Haaland, the FA had no option but to take action.

In the matter of the Beckham incident it plainly believes it does have a choice, and it has elected to take the line of least resistance. It is a disastrous decision in what it says about the game's current values. It says that compromise reigns over even the most basic issues.

The use of the elbow, we are told, is one of football's most serious crimes. Referees are bound to enforce this official view. Yet the English game's most celebrated player perpetrates this most serious of fouls and one of the leading referees sees him do it but takes no action. How do you preach uniformity of justice and rigorously applied discipline in the face of such inconsistency? How do you explain logically why Thierry Henry, of Arsenal, is being investigated for an incident at Charlton while the captain of England walks free because the referee of his match so palpably got it wrong? You can't. You just keep on shuffling down a road littered with unchecked little bouts of anarchy.

Football did this throughout the last century, but at no point was it as imperilled as it is today. Now the FA says it is mindful that the stakes have never been higher. Financial disaster is an ever-growing shadow. The need for greater discipline in all corners of football has never been so fiercely advocated, and nowhere more strongly than in the FA's Soho Square offices. Yet along comes a case involving English football's richest player and one of its most basic issues. What happens? It is casually tapped into touch with Bowyer, a victim on this occasion, saying: "I certainly don't want to say anything negative about Becks because he is a great player."

The implication is that being a great player means that you can get away with planting your elbow in someone's face. Could such a gut-wrenching possibility exist in a game that is supposed to be healing itself? All available evidence says yes. It is something that might make you want to scream if you had not seen it so many times before.

O'Leary exposed by delusional thinking

Judging by his television performance at the weekend, the former Leeds United manager David O'Leary seems to have missed the point of his dismissal.

Before his successor, Terry Venables, occupied the ground he was never able to tread with victory over Manchester United, O'Leary claimed that the Leeds team remained his. He had signed most of them and whatever they did under a new boss they would continue to carry his own imprint. As delusion goes, this was fairly serious. Mark Viduka, Lee Bowyer and Harry Kewell no longer belong to David O'Leary, and that was true from roughly the middle of last season. That is precisely why he was sacked.