Arsenal midfielder Jack Wilshere has just finished serving a two-game ban for sticking his middle finger up at Manchester City supporters.

A very stupid thing to do and fully deserving of the punishment it got if only for the poor example it set to young supporters.

However the Arsenal and England midfielder revealed last week that he was driven to making the gesture by fans who were aiming disgusting abuse at his two young children.

“Shouldn’t have reacted the way I did but I know all you dads out there love your kids the way I do,” he said on Twitter.

Yet instead of slamming the fans who pushed Wilshere to snap, FA chairman Greg Dyke has said he should just live with it.

“People can lose their cool very quickly, but he’s very well paid to play the game and he’s got to learn to cope with it,” Dyke said.

Excuse me? Are you serious Mr Dyke?

If the abuse that had been hurled at Wilshere had been even slightly racist then everyone would be falling over each other to condemn the fans and put a comforting arm around the player.

Manchester City would be desperately trying to identify the perpetrators to ban them from their ground and the newspapers would be full of how football needs to clean up its act.

But because this particular piece of abuse didn’t involve race, then the player has to just grin and bear it? How on earth can that be fair or logical?

The message football is essentially sending out here is that it is worse for a fan to shout, for example, ‘you black idiot’ at a black player than ‘I hope your children die of cancer’ at a white player.

That is over-compensation of the highest order, a ludicrous case of the authorities desperately trying to show they are riding high on the wave of political correctness that is sweeping through the game.

Players shouldn’t have to put up with verbal abuse of any sort, racist or otherwise. But you can’t tell one set of players to man up and take it on the chin while others get nothing but sympathy.

As I said at the beginning, I wholeheartedly agree that what Wilshere did was stupid and stems from his relative inexperience of dealing with the morons that go to matches brimming with hatred.

But allowing that type of abuse to go unpunished purely because it doesn’t involve race is equally wrong and sends out a particularly unpleasant message.

Everton on the way up

I have to admit I may have been a little bit harsh with my pre-season assessment of Roberto Martinez.

When he got the Everton job I was highly critical of the fact that he was essentially being rewarded for failure: he may have guided Wigan to the FA Cup last season but he still got them relegated. And avoiding that particular disaster should have been his overriding priority.

Yet all the evidence now suggests I was doing him a bit of a disservice. What he has done at Everton this season, without even spending any serious money, is nothing short of remarkable.

Under his predecessor at Goodison Park, there were times when Everton played some neat football. But there were many other occasions under David Moyes when the football on offer was dour and unexciting.

Not any more. That frequently negative style has gone, to be replaced by a fluent, efficient and extremely attractive approach to the game. And it is an approach that is not only winning admirers but, more importantly, winning matches.

On the few occasions I have seen Everton play this season – and I am trying to make it a point to watch them more regularly with every passing week – I have been highly impressed with their performances.

In fact, I would argue that the most enthralling match I have seen so far was the one between Everton and Arsenal, as pure a display of entertaining football as you could hope to see.

And considering Martinez is pretty much working with the same squad he inherited, the vast majority of the credit for this drastic improvement has to go to the manager.

There is still a long way to go this season, and the fluidity of Everton’s play may start to wane a bit as both winter and injuries set in. But if and when that happens, it shouldn’t detract from the way he moved up to a bigger club and immediately made his mark (unlike someone else I can think of).

Many people said Martinez was brilliant for keeping Wigan in the Premier League as long as he did. I thought he was a failure for getting them relegated.

I was wrong, and I have no problem admitting that.

Meanwhile, I am not going to jump on any anti-Moyes bandwagon here, but one thing about Everton’s resurgence this season does raise some questions over the Manchester United manager.

And that thing is Ross Barkley.

The young English midfielder has been an absolute revelation, and his talent must have been in evidence during Moyes time at Everton.

So why on earth didn’t he take him with him to Old Trafford instead of Marouane Fellaini? Some poor decision-making there…

(Please note that I wrote this piece about Martinez before Everton lost 1-0 at home to bottom club Sunderland. Is there no limit to the strength of my jinx?)

No Tim like the present

I still can’t quite believe Tim Sherwood got the Tottenham Hotspur job.

I’m all for it in principle – a young, English manager getting one of the top jobs in the Premier League is always a positive – but that doesn’t mean this is anything other than a courageous move by Daniel Levy.

We are talking about a squad of players that is probably worth something close to a quarter of a billion pounds here. And a team that has serious aspirations of a top four finish at the very least.

To put that sort of responsibility in the hands of a man who has never managed a team before is quite astonishing and could very well prove to be Levy’s downfall if and when it all goes pear-shape.

To be fair, Sherwood played his hand very well. He picked an attacking formation in the away win over Southampton, which was just what the fans had been demanding after the defensive drivel Andre Villas-Boas had been serving up. And he followed that up by giving Levy an ultimatum: give me the job or I’m off.

And that is precisely what Tottenham’s chairman did, handing Sherwood a contract till the end of next season – not exactly a long-term vote of confidence but at least more solid than an interim, end-of-the-season thing.

Will it work out? I really can’t say. But I can’t knock Sherwood’s drive and ambition, and he may just have half the battle won right there.

The other half comes in the form of ensuring that top four finish Levy desperately craves. And sadly, I can’t see him pulling that off…

sportscolumnist@timesofmalta.com
Twitter: @maltablade

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