Straw Poll

Any fond hopes that Gorgeous Graham Poll might have cherished of clambering back to the dizzy heights he once inhabited when he was widely regarded as England’s premier referee had evaporated at Stamford Bridge by the end of a meaningless 0-0 draw fought out (almost literally at times) between the newly crowned Champions Manchester United (well, some of them anyway) and the highly embarrassed rouble-rich runners up.

As things turned out, the only reputation Poll managed to enhance on this occasion was his position as Mr Inconsistent. The man who likes to look as though he’s the star who just left the make-up department shuffled awkwardly through this game dispensing yellow cards with such flagrant disregard for reality that he barely got half of them right and totally bottling two situations which actually justified a red, only one of which was a tackle. The other, almost inevitably, involved Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho who, unable to contain either himself or his dislike of Poll, launched into a ferocious finger-wagging touchline diatribe and then retired meekly to the anonymous seats, convinced that he had paid the price for his outburst and contemplating an historic Wembley Cup Final in which he would be deprived of the opportunity to strut his stuff in the technical area. He needn’t have worried. It transpired that Poll didn’t censure him at all because when it comes to taking on high profile figures in the game, he isn’t much better at that than he was at simple arithmetic in the World Cup.