OLIVER HOLT: It's fashionable to lose it in football but Mitrovic and Silva have exploded the myth. Anger is NOT good. It made them look small, irrational and idiotic. Men to be pitied, not admired

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An orthodoxy has been allowed to flourish in football in recent years that anger is good. Its champion is Roy Keane, who was always angry as a player and is always angry as a pundit.

His despair at the pusillanimity of modern football plays well with some of us because we fear that the money that has washed over the Premier League has dulled the hunger in players and managers. Anger is seen, by some, as proof that hunger has survived.

And so, a few weeks ago, when Chelsea manager Graham Potter did not rage and rant and scream when his team were denied a penalty in a high-pressure game at West Ham, when his eyes did not bulge and his veins did not pop, when he did not yell at the fourth official and fleck his face with spittle, he was criticised by a series of analysts for not being angry enough. He was told, believe it or not, that he was setting the wrong example.

It is fashionable to lose it in football, you see. Mikel Arteta, the best manager in the Premier League this season, runs up and down the touchline like a madman who has lost all reason when a decision goes against his Arsenal team. 

Jose Mourinho, who has sought to hide his own failings by blaming officials throughout his entire career, was sent off for the third time this season in Roma’s defeat at Cremonese last month after an argument with the fourth official.

Aleksandar Mitrovic and Marco Silva made themselves look idiotic and irrational with their angry behaviour during Fulham's loss to Man United on Saturday

So maybe we should be grateful to Fulham manager Marco Silva and his centre forward Aleksandar Mitrovic for the way they behaved in the midst of defeat to Manchester United in their FA Cup quarter-final at Old Trafford on Sunday evening. 

Maybe we should be grateful to them for the way they made themselves look so ugly and so pathetic and so stupid. Maybe we should be grateful to them for the way they cost their club a shot at an FA Cup semi-final at Wembley.

Because Silva and Mitrovic and the way they behaved and the punishments that should now be visited upon them, exploded the anger myth. Anger is not good. Anger made both Silva and Mitrovic, a coach and a striker who had been rightly lauded for their contributions to Fulham’s superb season thus far, look like small, irrational, idiotic men, men to be pitied rather than admired.

Maybe we owe them a debt for putting their ugliness on full display on a Sunday evening in front of a large audience of kids as well as adults on terrestrial television. 

Maybe we should thank them for reminding us again that anger in the professional game perpetuates and intensifies the epidemic of physical and psychological abuse of referees at the grassroots in this country that is one of the biggest and ugliest problems in modern football. It perpetuates the culture of entitlement and infallibility radiated by too many managers and players.

I know people who run junior clubs in this country and think nothing of provoking bar-room brawls one day and standing on a football touchline the next.

Mitrovic should not play again this season after shoving Chris Kavanagh following Willian's red card and then got in his face

Anger is the calling card of too many people who watch grassroots football. Anger that is directed at young referees, anger that inflames other parents, anger directed at young players on an opposing team. Anger that prompted the FA to insist ropes were erected on Sunday morning touchlines to protect kids from mad dads. How did we lose sight so completely of the idea that football is supposed to be fun?

We lost sight of it, sadly, because of people like Silva and Mitrovic. I saw some observers bemoaning a lack of consistency in the absence of punishment for Bruno Fernandes, who pushed a referee’s assistant during United’s humiliation at Anfield earlier this month, and Mitrovic’s red card at Old Trafford. I’m sorry but is this really the time for more tiresome whataboutery?

No, this is the time to say that Mitrovic needs to decide whether he wants to be a professional footballer or a two-bit thug. Sure, Fernandes should have been sent off for putting his hands on the linesman at Anfield but what he did wasn’t in the same league as Mitrovic’s antics.

It wasn’t particularly that Mitrovic grabbed Chris Kavanagh and pulled him back after he had shown a red card to Willian for one of the most blatant goal-line handballs you could wish to see. It was more that Mitrovic then got right in Kavanagh’s face and looked as if he was going to attack him. Then, as Kavanagh was forced to retreat, Mitrovic pursued him around the pitch.

The solution is obvious. Mitrovic should not play again this season and, if that happens, he should think himself lucky that the punishment is that mild. What Mitrovic did and the manner in which he did it, is the kind of behaviour that gets a referee physically assaulted at a grassroots game. It’s the kind of behaviour that makes kids and lesser players think it’s okay to threaten an official.

It's fashionable to lose it in football but Mitrovic and Silva have exploded the myth that anger is good for the game

Ban him and ban Silva, too. Because in some ways, Silva’s offence is worse. Mitrovic is a thug but Silva holds a position of responsibility. He is supposed to be setting an example to his players and to others. 

Instead of which, when he is confronted by one of his players committing an obvious red-card offence, he goes and acts like a petulant child, throws a water bottle, follows the referee out of his technical area and abrogates all responsibility for his team.

Then, he compounds his idiocy by indulging in absurd and damaging crackpot conspiracy theories about Kavanagh being somehow biased against Fulham and hinting at surprise that the official had been allocated the match in the first place. What? Silva has had a fantastic season in charge of Fulham and rebuilt his career but he needs to grow up fast. He is supposed to be a smart man. He behaved like a clown.

There is no room for that behaviour in football. It is inexcusable. So throw the book at Mitrovic and at Silva, ban Mitrovic for the rest of the season and tell Silva he can come back when he has worked out how not to act like a toddler with a bad case of the terrible twos. With a fool like him, I suppose it may take a while. We can wait.

Fighting talk but no action from Murray 

I was hoping that Colin Murray, the most principled and self-reverential man on the airwaves, might have noted that some of his BBC colleagues, in local radio, were taking industrial action last week in protest against more cuts to their output. 

I was hoping that given his show of solidarity with Gary Lineker last week, he might refuse to host his 5 Live Saturday morning show, Fighting Talk, again. God knows, we need the respite. 

Regrettably, Murray was back on the air on schedule, laughing at his own hilarity. Solidarity with millionaires is one thing. Solidarity with journalists with a lower profile, apparently, is a little harder to come by.

Colin Murray refused to take a stand with his BBC colleagues taking industrial action last week - having protested against Gary Lineker's Match of the Day axe

There’s no substitute for being in the first team 

I was once upbraided by ex-England men’s rugby union coach Eddie Jones for suggesting in a press conference near Tokyo Disneyland, appropriately enough, that George Ford had been ‘left out’ of an approaching England game at the 2019 World Cup. Jones said Ford hadn’t been left out. 

He was one of the ‘finishers’, he said, and I needed to get with the programme. Like many others, I thought of Jones when Mikel Arteta revealed his risible plan to refer to Arsenal’s substitutes as ‘impacters’ from now on. Impacters? Let’s stop calling it the bench while we’re at it and rename it ‘the launch pad’. 

Let’s dispense with tracksuit tops for the impacters and give them Superman capes, just to make sure they feel good about themselves. What is it people like Jones and Arteta are so afraid of? Are their players so fragile that they can’t cope with not making the starting line-up? It’s absurd. 

Find me a player who says he’d rather be named among the impacters than the first team and I’ll hold up my hands. Until then, let’s stop with the sophistry.

Let's stop with the idea that being on the bench is something to be celebrated - after Mikel Arteta rebranded his substitutes 'impacters'