Susan Clegg, ex girlfriend and business adviser to Premiership referee Mark Clattenburg has been arrested after someone poured something nasty over his Porsche, complete with customised number plates.
Clattenburg is currently being investigated by the football authorities for his business dealings and debts.
There was a time when refs were avuncular figures who ran about, whistled and got shouted at by players just for the love of the game.
Now they’re paid, £40,000 a year with generous expenses, and seem to be regard themselves as glamour figures on a par with the players.
Former referee Graham Poll, the man who famously gave someone three yellow cards in one match, even writes a column for the Daily Mail and features on Setanta’s TV coverage of football, where he seems to get decisions alarmingly wrong even with the benefit of hindsight and TV replays.
There’s a bewhiskered expression, “who’s in charge of the clattering train?”
Increasingly that’s the way you feel about football in the UK. Maybe it’s already hit the buffers and we just haven’t noticed yet.