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GRAHAM POLL
Seeing Red
For Julia, Gemma, Josie and Harry
Contents
| Foreword by Sir Alex Ferguson | |
| 1. Alone in the Middle | |
| 2. Beckham Calling | |
| 3. Chelsea on the Attack | |
| 4. Big Time Charlie | |
| 5. No Defence from John Terry | |
| 6. Stop the Ride | |
| 7. Despicable Outburst | |
| 8. Fat King Melon | |
| 9. Cup Final Blues | |
| 10. Collina, Dad and Me | |
| 11. Running Backwards and Moving Up | |
| 12. A Tring Thing | |
| 13. Smiling at Warnock | |
| 14. 'Robbed' of a Million | |
| 15. Lost Identity | |
| 16. Red Wine and Blue Tank Top | |
| 17. An Offer I Had to Refuse | |
| 18. Savage ‘Humour’ | |
| 19. Sleepless in Japan | |
| 20. Gerrard, Zidane and a Full Set | |
| 21. Not Bitter but Angry | |
| 22. Arsenal, United and That Game | |
| 23. Betrayed but Selected | |
| 24. Home Thoughts from Germany | |
| 25. 'Some Confusion' over Yellow Cards | |
| 26. Don't Blame Anyone Else | |
| 27. Woolmer Green to Wembley | |
| Appendix: My Top Ten Frequently Asked Questions | |
| Acknowledgments | |
| Index |
By Sir Alex Ferguson
Referees have football’s poisoned chalice. Obviously the game needs refereeing and yet very few people want to do it. So the likes of Graham Poll, who get involved at a young age at grassroots level, deserve enormous credit and the thanks of all us who care about the game of football. Perhaps – no disrespect, Graham! – they are not the greatest footballers but they want to be involved in football because they love the game, and that is a very good thing.
Then, if they work their way up to professional level and the very serious stuff, they become the focus of an enormous amount of scrutiny. It is not just me, and all the other managers, watching their every move and being very demanding. It is not just the players and the fans who are focused on everything they do. It is, of course, all the television cameras. If a referee makes the smallest mistake, a television analyst will tell the world, ‘That mistake cost this team a goal.’ It is incredibly difficult to have the confidence to make decisions in those circumstances. Big brother is watching you all the time.
That is why, when the discussions were going on about referees becoming full-time professionals a few years ago, I was against the move. At a meeting in London about the subject I said that it didn’t matter how much referees were paid and how often they trained, some of them would still not be able to make decisions. I said that it would not matter if we paid referees £300,000 a week and got them training every day; some of them would still not be able to make decisions.
I think I have been proved right about that. Some of our professional referees still cannot make decisions. That is a human characteristic which you will find in every walk of life. It is not confined to refereeing. You can either make a decision or you can’t and I have worked with people, and known people, who just cannot.
My summary of Graham Poll is quite simple. He can make decisions. Without question, in my time in England, he has been the referee who has been easily the best decision-maker of all. He has been able to deport himself throughout his whole career with a confidence, and with expression, which has never been diluted by the presence of dozens of TV cameras watching him.
That view is supported by sound evidence, because it is not just me who thinks Graham has been a good decision-maker. That is what many others have said. That praise has enabled him to go into games with a certain confidence, but he had to have the gift for decision-making in the first place and had to