What happened in Istanbul on Wednesday night was both predictable and predicted. For too long UEFA have turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to the orchestrated nonsenses that accompany every European tie in Istanbul. The organised mob at the airport spitting, jeering and uttering blood-curdling threats often accompanied, as it was when Chelsea visited last year, by a ritual stoning of the team bus.
The atmosphere of hatred whipped up by an often xenophobic media, all those "welcome to hell" banners in the stadium and the missiles that rain down on visiting supporters that put one visiting fan's eye out not so very long ago.
UEFA do nothing, even when that process is assisted by club officials, as it was last year when the Galatasaray coach claimed his team had been treated with contempt in London by the absence of a welcoming party from Chelsea at the airport, and made a public call for vengeance when Chelsea went to Istanbul.
Maybe UEFA believe, as Mae West did, that 'men who pretend to be macho are often not up to mucho'. And so it was when Chelsea visited. Long before the end of the game the crowd had largely melted away, and those that remained applauded Chelsea off.
But not to take action against the Turks was a fatal miscalculation. In the odious atmosphere that prevailed, sooner or later the pantomime scenes were going to give way to something more dreadful, and that's what happened on Wednesday. The Turks say the fighting started because a drunken Leeds supporter insulted a van driver. Well they would say that, wouldn't they? Just as, back in 1993, during a Manchester United visit, the Turkish police dragged a deaf British woman out of her hotel bed at 3am, claiming they were arresting her for her own protection. The police also tolerated one of their number spitting in the face of a young British woman doctor, who had been taken into custody for no better reason than that she supported Manchester United.
I write all this without knowing what, if any, trouble there was last night, but with the certain conviction that even if there was none, three things need to be done.
First, there must be proper Foreign Office support for the families of the dead and wounded in obtaining proper redress and ensuring arrests are made. That support was not forthcoming in 1993 when I led a delegation to see a Foreign Office minister to protest.
All of us who know Leeds and their supporters will not be starry-eyed about their behaviour and it will be no surprise to learn that some of them were acting up. But that doesn't justify knifing people to death and our authorities must not be allowed to get away with inaction on the basis that they're only football fans, and football fans deserve all they get.
Second, UEFA must review the antics of the Istanbul teams and their fans and suspend them from European competitions unless and until proper action is taken to stop these hate campaigns that make trouble inevitable.
Third, it's long overdue and our Government should now insist that the European Union, which harmonises so brilliantly the contents of our sausages, should cooperate with UEFA to harmonise, using civilised standards, the way in which police forces treat visiting supporters.
Examples are legion of where that doesn't happen: the England game in Rome, where my son was one of those subjected to Italian police brutality, or Chelsea's recent visit to Marseille where, without any real provocation, French paramilitary police teargassed visiting fans. We don't treat their people like that so why should our citizens be abused in this way?
Maybe those two dead Leeds fans weren't saints. Who knows? But of one thing I am certain. They deserve better than they got on Wednesday night. And let no one in authority either here or there, or at UEFA HQ, say this trouble came out of a clear blue sky, because it didn't. And it's now time to do something about it.
The hidden costs of pay per view
Is the assumption that we can't get enough football on television correct? Are people who tune in to the Sky Sunday game at 4pm, really going to pay £6 more to watch on pay-per-view at 2pm as well? And if they do, will they continue to pay their subscriptions if the pay-per-view game offers better entertainment?
I write that with feeling, since a number of Sky's recent Sunday games seem to have been deliberately chosen to give us the fixture we least want to see.
Now the reason Sky pay silly money is exclusivity. So if, as is now suggested, the Premiership are going to let a different company have a pay-per-view contract than the one that does the subscription games, will each be willing to talk telephone numbers for a product that won't be theirs alone? Again I wonder.
And then there's the small question of football fans being the only audience expected to pay (and often through the nose too) to be part of a live audience at a TV show. But their presence is vital. When they're not there, the atmosphere suffers, so if there's an assumption that all the increased TV money can be pocketed, while still ratcheting up the ticket prices, that too could be a false premise too far. And that's especially so if more TV means even more interference with the traditional football Saturday.
Are yet more people who want to watch a game at 3pm on Saturdays going to be willing to travel, often hundreds of miles, to watch at 2pm on Sunday or will they stay at home?
There's not doubt TV has transformed our game for the better. Only the terminally naive will assume that British talent alone could have made our Premiership the most exciting league in Europe, and arguably the best. It's the foreign superstars drawn by the TV largesse that has done that.
But that same embarrassment of riches has fuelled a loadsamoney culture that leaves many players, including a lot of mediocre ones, and their agents, imagining there are no limits to what they can be paid for kicking a ball around.
And the dreadful prospect unfolds of all of the new money going to fuel football's already rampant inflation. So what about the consumers' interest in all this? Will the Premiership safeguard their customers by insisting on limitations in the contracts, on increases in subscriptions? It shouldn't be too much to ask.
One of the ideas that seems to have died is putting a dozen Premiership games free on terrestrial television. But should the main channels be left with only highlights packages? Surely it's time to reopen the question of all of England's games being shown on BB1 or ITV?
And if that requires some compensation payments to be made by the Premiership to the FA, surely that would be worth it, given what an effective recruiting sergeant good international games can be for Premiership packages available only on subscription. And I continue to think, as a matter of principle, that the national team should be available to the nation as a whole.
We need more than half a Cup
The Football Association have a real problem with the FA Cup. Last Sunday's semi-final was better suited to Hackney Marshes than Wembley Stadium.
The kindest thing you can say is that it was almost as good as some of the dire League Cup Finals we've had to endure down the years, but no way would two such ordinary teams have reached the semi-finals of the FA Cup in the days when winning this trophy was top of every club's agenda.
A checklist of measures to be taken might include:
No more semi-finals at Wembley unless they are between two top London clubs, when for security reasons Wembley might be better.
No exemptions allowed for any reason whatsoever.
A return to the old timetable where the third round of the Cup is after Christmas, and the League Cup finished, bar the final, by the turn of the year.
Replays to settle all key games. To end a semi-final with a penalty shoot-out devalues the whole thing.
Those replays to take place within four days of the original tie to keep the interest up.
Maybe the FA Cup's decline is inevitable in a Europe-dominated world, but that could be arrested by the FA taking firm action to protect the reputation of what used to be their proudest possession.
Vialli's men strike it rich
So Barcelona aren't invincible and you read it here first. What a difference it makes when Chelsea take their chances. Five strikes on target in the first half, three of them goals. Yet Chelsea have gone through several Premiership games this season with more than 20 shots on target and only the odd goal to show for it.
Can Chelsea sustain their lead in the Nou Camp? You need to bear in mind that two of their finest performances this season came in Italy, against AC Milan and Lazio, and in each case they got a well-deserved draw. So why not?
But win or lose, Wednesday night is a memory to last a lifetime.
Walker must pay for errors
Ian Walker is outraged to be booed by large sections of the Spurs support after letting in two soft goals on Monday. But what else did he expect? He says he's played well on other occasions. So what? Walker is paid a king's ransom, more money in a season than Gordon Banks made in his whole career, so if he doesn't perform he'll get stick from the people who pay his wages. And he deserves it.
Talking of stick, George Graham, in understandable frustration, lashed out verbally at the ref and is now facing a disrepute charge.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of this case, when will the FA get it into their heads that the people who really bring our game into disrepute are those who tolerate inadequate referees on the Premiership list, not those who point out how useless a lot of them are?
