Phil Brown thinks that Hull are being persecuted. Arsene Wenger growls and refuses to shake hands. Mike Riley misses absolutely everything that happens including a blatantly offside goal and a spat in the tunnel.

I thought that I was going to get a surprise in football this week.

Okay. Let’s start with the Tiger.

Phil Brown has done a fantastic job at the KC. Hull City were top dogs ( or there or thereabouts) during the early weeks of the season and they have had some superb results including the 1-0 win at the Emirates, now legendary on Humberside but clearly still raw in North London. Yet now a run of results, the win at Fulham excepted, has left them dangling on the precipice of the relegation crevasse, suddenly things are constantly going against the Amber and Blacks. Welcome to the Premiership Mr Brown. This is how it works or didn’t you know?

Liverpool, especially at Anfield, Manchester United, and any club south of the Watford Gap (West Ham Utd get double points on this score) are a valuable part of the Premier league and are to be protected at all costs. The fact that fall-out from the decision not to deduct and effectively relegate the Hammers is still reverberating around football more than two years later is proof that those in power and of whom I have written so lovingly before (please note heavy sarcasm) do not, basically, give a rancid cows liver about anyone other than their beloved elite.

Mr Brown also has a short memory. I remember watching as Geovanni tumbled like a sack of spuds earning himself a penalty and poor David Wheater a red card to gain Hull what in more than one persons opinion was a totally undeserved three points. Reality has finally hit home and the great start that often comes with being Premier League new boys and, as a result, unknown quantities has faded into the dim and distant past. What is left is the not so attractive part of the game - the scrap for what is left at the business end of an otherwise undistinguished season.

Arsene Wenger is no stranger to controversy. Only a short while into his tenure in the Gunners hotseat, rumours started to circulate about his private life. He immediately stated his intent to leave Highbury as then was unless they stopped. Unsurprisingly, given the geographical proximity of most of the tabloid and southern-biased press, they stopped. Since then, the Frenchman has spent time as flavour of the month and public enemy number one not to mention a host of positions in-between. Arsenal have progressed under his guidance from the ‘1-0 to the Arsenal, Tony Adams and Ian Wright-dominated’ team that a lot of us loved to hate to one of the most entertaining sides in the game. He has also shown a canny knack in spotting talent early.

Unfortunately, he has also acquired or ’developed’ the knack of antagonising and alienating a hell of a lot of people in the game - supporters, other managers, referees (okay forget the last lot - they get everything they deserve) - and appears hell-bent on continuing the trend. He is not alone as Rafa Benitez, Sir Alex Ferguson and Jose, no, Felipe, no……Guus…..oh, not yet…well, Chelsea managers anyway are also guilty of wanting to have their cake and eat it. Isn’t it enough to get the majority of decisions in your favour without necessarily getting all of them?

And so to Mike Riley. I have a distinct sense of déjà vu here. Granted, he wasn’t actually running the line at the Emirates but his holier-than-thou attitude at the end of the game smacks of conceit at best and, at worst, almost from a belief of invincibility which can only come from unwavering support from on-high.

I would normally be relatively careful here in case my mother ever gets to read this but, going out on a limb, the guy is a complete prick. He does not under any circumstances represent the idealistic or even competent face of officialdom yet here he is, Premier League referee, making mistake after mistake without even a reprimand or apology. I’ve said before that the last ‘good’ game I ever saw him have was 29/2/09 and that was only because he made more mistakes in our favour than in Bolton’s. If he ever referees a game where the Boro are involved, I automatically assume either (a) a defeat, (b) a sending off or (c) both or worse.

Video replays are acceptable in major professional sports worldwide. Yet the ageing and incontinent, sorry, incompetent morons that run the English, European and World game refuse to allow the game to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century. The technology is there, the will is there from everyone that matters but will they do it - will they ’eckerslike?

Why? Because it will show beyond any reasonable doubt that the clowns they put in charge of each and every ninety minutes are simply not up to it. And this is despite the £’M’s that revolves around the game and the results. One day, they will come to regret their lack of foresight or excess of pig-ignorance whichever it is.

So, apart from that, not too much to talk about. Quiet and un-inspiring week really.