An Official Compliment

As the team of officials walked off the field after the London derby at Stamford Bridge, the cameras picked up Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho, who had clearly rushed onto the pitch with indecent haste in order to invite himself to a bit of a post-mortem, or to tell referee Alan Wiley a few home truths while solicitously draping a friendly arm round the shoulder.

Whatever the content of that conversation, it was clear that Mr Wiley was serenely unperturbed and he would probably have remained unperturbed if he had witnessed the Special One’s post-match interview with Sky, in which he was overtly critical of the referee’s performance.

Fortunately, unflappability is one of Alan Wiley’s virtues and he is intelligent enough to know that it is impossible to meet with Mr Mourinho’s unqualified approval if you have the audacity to discipline any of his players. Even free kicks seem to be frowned upon, bookings are liable to trigger wild cavortings about the touchline and anything like a red card or a penalty to the opposition is likely, one suspects, to induce Portuguese apoplexy, followed by the mysterious absence of future invitations to officiate at Chelsea’s games.

The truth is that Alan Wiley had a fantastic match. Referees are no more likely to turn in flawless performances than players (though many seem to expect them to) and on this occasion it was possible to point to only two mistakes. Wiley should have booked Philippe Senderos when he clearly impeded Drogba in the first half and his failure to penalise Ashley Cole for a second half foul allowed Chelsea their equaliser seconds later. That apart, he refereed a difficult game superbly. His decisions were spot on, he was calm but firm and at no point did he allow himself to be influenced by posses of Chelsea players disputing every decision given against them.

On this showing, he has as much right as Graham Poll to be at the head of the queue when a referee is sought for a crucial, or particularly difficult, game. Whatever the so-called Special One thinks.