Stand up comic and Arsenal season ticket holder Alan Davies has a regular column in The Times and despite his pleadings he can't hide his distaste for anything to do with United.
'Complaints about Van Nistelrooy are not about him being a Moan U player. They’re about him being a cheat. I watched the Holland v Sweden game in a bar. He should have been sent off twice. Once for two yellows, the first when he dived to try to win a penalty against Mellberg, the second for a deliberate handball when he controlled a pass with his arm before nearly scoring with a ricochet from the goalkeeper. Both times Sweden players, angered by the cheating and incensed by the lack of punishment, shouted at officials. Both times Van Nistelrooy screamed at them like a child whose peers are telling on him.
The second red should have been for an elbow to the head after he’d laid the ball off. It looks accidental but flailing arms are a big part of his game. Either you hold one to try to get to the ball, at which point he squeals and drops to the floor, or you take a hit as Sylvain Legwinski did at Old Trafford once. He didn’t go down and yet another "accident" verdict was passed.
To watch him on TV is one thing but to see it in the flesh as I did from row 2 at the Alavalade Stadium last Wednesday is appalling. First he seems to convince himself of the ineptitude of officials and then, judging them by his own standards, that opponents are dishonest and trying to get him in trouble. With his self-perpetuating sense of injustice fuelled, he plays as if he’s above the laws.'
Unlike Henry, Pires and the monkey man etc, etc, etc.