The rant you’re about to read is usually the classic sign of a paranoid football fan. After all, we all think that the world is against our team, the newspapers are biased, referees have got it in for us, we never get any credit. And as for opposing fans….

But still, despite all that, the ridiculous red card for Mario Balotelli last weekend against Liverpool suggests to me, that just sometimes, that paranoia is justified.

Referees will of course claim that they enter the pitch with no agendas, and make impartial decisions on each particular incident alone. This is clearly poppycock, because they are human beings, and human nature means they have pre-conceived ideas about certain players, and treat them differently as a consequence.

To suggest Wayne Rooney gets away with metaphorical murder on the football pitch is the same as suggesting that night follows day – you could offer many theories as to why some players are allowed to say what they want to a referee with impunity or get the benefit of the doubt over some hairy challenges, but they tend to be English, which is not to suggest a wave of xenophobia from referees in how they deal with players, but a certain leniency to many “stalwarts” of the game, a blind eye to many established Premier League players. Balotelli doesn’t fit this description, he is the crazy youngster from far away who fires darts at youth players, almost burns down his house with fireworks, walks around with bundles of cash in his pocket, gets his friends to chat up women for him, receives 2000 parking tickets in a year and hangs around with the mafia. Well I read all this in the tabloids, so consider it to be 100% true.

When Graham Poll is appearing on Talksport decrying his hairstyle, it gives you a good insight into how match officials enter the field with agendas and preconceived ideas. Maybe Balotelli deserves it then. Hey, he doesn’t smile enough for my liking, throw the book at him.

It’s the reverse of commentators mentioning that Player X is “not that type of player” when he is sent off for a knee-high challenge. That player could throw kittens off bridges every night, he could have been sent off 40 times in his career, or he could have never fouled before in an illustrious 20-year career. It’s all irrelevant – it was either a red card or it wasn’t.

Balotelli’s first yellow card was perfectly justified – an innocuous pull-back on an opposing player, but a text-book yellow card in the modern game. The second card was brandished on reputation alone, by a referee who has a knack of sending off opposition players at Anfield (Balotelli completing the hat-trick). Maybe I am being blinkered – after all I have read a few City fans and journalists write online that he led with his elbow, and thus it was a stupid challenge and he was asking for trouble.

But no, that simply isn’t true. There was no elbow sticking out, only an extended arm which I presume he was using to try and protect the ball from the opposing player, as part of his whole body. Clumsy perhaps, but nothing more. His fate was sealed when the Liverpool player went down as if shot, clutching a head that hadn’t come into contact with anything, whilst five or six of his team-mates crowded round the referee demanding a red card. Has football really become so averse to contact of any sort that Balotelli’s attempt at a tackle for his second yellow card is now considered as fair game for punishment?

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I’m not blinkered to Balotelli’s discretions. His demeanour makes him a target on the field, though a professional referee should be capable of looking beyond this. I can see when he has done wrong – the red card at home to Dynamo Kiev last season was utterly justified and put paid to City’s Europa League chances. A dismissal at West Brom though last season was even more ridiculous than the one at Anfield – we’ve been here before.

He’s not the only one to be pre-judged on the field either, due to off-field controversies. Joey Barton is one that springs to mind (not that he is always innocent, as seen against Arsenal this season), a man whose reputation on the field is probably confused with what he has done off it. The truth is that there are plenty of Premiership players who have sinned on a football field far more than Barton, but attracted much less attention for it. Likewise, those footballers portrayed as professional wind-up merchants like Robbie Savage also carry a stigma onto the field with them. In 2008, the Daily Mail labelled Savage as the dirtiest player in Premier League history, based on numbers of yellow cards received (87), though apparently he has since been surpassed as the player with the most Premier League yellow cards by Lee Bowyer. And throughout his career, Savage was only sent off for his club side once. Was Savage really ome of the Premiership’s worst ever miscreants on a football field?

Players are the victims of soft red cards all the time – it doesn’t take much to get dismissed nowadays. If you agree Balotelli was hard done by, you’ll also agree that he isn’t the first, and he won’t be the last. But lets hope that in the future, referees have the ability to see through his reputation, and judge him on the foul alone. Otherwise, discussing the disciplinary record of Mr Balotelli could become a depressingly common occurrence in the future.

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