Mark Clattenburg has given Jose Mourinho and Jurgen Klopp an excuse to ignore reality

Jose Mourinho is a man who is easily understood. Mourinho lost 2-1 to Manchester City with his Manchester United side. It was another of his poor, conservative performances, where the opposition showed enough weakness to invite more attacking, not less.

As excellent as City have been for much of the season, they beat United by just one goal, and Fabian Delph and Kyle Walker demonstrated they were vulnerable. Unfortunately for Mourinho, City had more than enough of the ball to use their attacking talents to open up United often enough, even if their two goals came from set pieces.

It was a result that showed a missed opportunity, conceded the title, and also poses more serious questions about United’s potential with their current manager.

Now, another £90m in the winter transfer window and Mesut Ozil in the summer might be enough to solve the vast majority of worries. Getting rid of Chris Smalling and other deadwood still at the club would provide a significant boost and give them a better chance of winning something next season with Mourinho’s tactics.

That doesn’t mean Mourinho can be excused this season, though. Aside from Guardiola’s impressive winning streak, that should be the main talking point today.

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Instead, the headlines are about Mourinho causing a huge stramash in the Manchester City dressing room. Mikel Arteta ended up bleeding, and Romelu Lukaku was reportedly heavily involved in the contretemps.

It is fairly obvious what is going on. Mourinho has started needling Guardiola over Catalan independence, has started telling referees that City are a dirty side and that they are prone to diving. Expect this to carry on for the next 18 months, ending one of two ways: Either Guardiola has learned from his time at Barcelona and will simply ignore Mourinho.

Or he will rise to the bait and similarly blow up under the stress, watching Mourinho wheel around the pitch holding the 2018/19 Premier League trophy, nude save for the colours of the Spanish flag painted on him in bodypaint.

As well as kicking off over City’s provocative happiness, Mourinho also complained that he had been denied a clear penalty. In his opinion, when Ander Herrera threw himself to the ground the box – as he did in very similar fashion against Chelsea – he was denied a clear penalty.

Obviously, it wasn’t a clear penalty, it was a dive and Herrera was justly punished for it. Given Herrera has reverted to offering less than nothing to United this season, it was generous of Mourinho to defend him in this way but nevertheless, it is all a distraction.

Far better to allege some conspiracy, stir the pot, throw a few insults and watch his sardines thrown from the trawler be gratefully received. Better that than wonder if he is doing his job well enough.

Mourinho wasn’t the only person to speak guff over a penalty this week. Jurgen Klopp has in the past been needlessly chippy to interviewers in the past, and was again yesterday. He was sarcastic and confrontational to a largely blameless Sky Sports interviewer and then carried on again with newspaper journalists afterwards.

He was hacked off that Dejan Lovren was punished for a fairly soft foul that allowed Wayne Rooney to equalise and so he took it out on those closest to him afterwards. It appears that his natural bias meant that he was unable to consider that pushing over a striker in the box will often result in a foul. As Sam Allardyce pointed out, if you don’t want to concede penalties, don’t push players over in the box.

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Klopp appears to be one of the more decent managers in the Premier League. He seems largely fair and honest, and while it is unpleasant that people suffer when he loses his temper, he was quick to apologise yesterday. He seemed to be talking rubbish from an honest place, rather than a cynical one as Mourinho did – which in part might be why he isn’t as capable a manager.

As unseemly as both these episodes were, though, it is hard to blame either of them anymore. For years, the received wisdom on referees was that compared to most officials across the world, they were pretty good. If they were awful, or made awful decisions, then it was a momentary failing, or perhaps strident incompetence, nothing ulterior. Mark Clattenburg has made that a much harder position to hold.

Last week he admitted that despite knowing Manchester United had conceded a goal kick on his watch, he was so scared of Roy Keane that he awarded a corner. Before that, he claimed that he had failed to send off Spurs players in order to shape the story of their failure in the manner that suited him best. This isn’t crooked refereeing, but it is dishonest, and not what he was employed to do.

When Howard Webb took demonstrably the wrong decisions in big games, it always smacked of him displaying his own authority for its own end, much like you would expect from a policeman. When Mike Dean showered himself with attention throughout his career, it seemed the act of a pompous man. The less said about Jeff Winter, who thought the Anfield crowd applauded his last game, the better. Which is something Winter probably doesn’t agree with.

Clattenburg has, at a stroke, undermined his profession, and retrospectively given us all a new angle. He has given managers another reason to dispute the obvious. There may be no conspiracy, their may be no extensive corruption but Clattenburg has removed any plausible deniability from such speculation from the angry, cynical and disappointed Premier League manager.