Well you don't say! According to veteran referee Steve Bennett some Premiership stars are not averse to deliberately picking up bookings so they can get a few days off under suspension. Many quite fancy this option at Christmas, to get a few days with the family or their coke dealer or whomever, while others try to make sure they miss trips to, say, Bolton so they won't get kicked up in the air. Anyone who's played in or coached even a junior sports team knows that this is pretty common, not earning bookings perhaps but producing excuses when the weather's cold or you're playing someone particularly violent. Coaches rapidly work out who the skivers are and turf them out of the team permanently. Premiership football is a tad more complicated admittedly, players costing and earning a great deal of money. So sometimes the managers, who probably bought the Carlos Kickaball in question, just get on with it. Every fan can name half a dozen players who only perform at home and who go missing, in person or in mind, at away games. But if they help you win half your home matches you're two thirds of the way to avoiding relegation. So ref Bennett's late night bar confessions at a UEFA refs' pow-wow at a hotel near Malaga, as dutifully reported by the News of the World, aren't really very shocking at all. But that won't prevent the usual display of hand-wringing by the football authorities.