Referees and their officials are so often vilified for making the wrong decision, regardless of whether they could see the incident, that it is often difficult not to feel slightly sorry for them. Take yesterday’s early offside in the Carling Cup final: Birmingham’s Lee Bowyer is played through, flagged offside and television replays show he was actually the opposite. Bowyer running one way at full tilt and an Arsenal defender walking the other way creates a difficult decision – sometimes it is given correctly, other times not. A team can only hope that these things even out and, though often it does not, especially when facing bigger teams, Birmingham snatched a late win and the wrong decision is confined to history.

Add in just shy of 90,000 people creating an atmosphere at the home of English football, while a further several million watch from their television sets and the pressure can get to anyone. Cup final day and plenty at stake.

Compare that to Mark Clattenburg’s surroundings on Saturday. The DW Stadium with a scattering of 18,000 people and an incident that was clearer than a split-second call. That Clattenburg decided to give a free-kick the way of Wigan when Wayne Rooney’s elbow landed on the cheek of James McCarthy shows he saw the incident. That Rooney was not even booked for raising his arm has to call into question the quality of Clattenburg as a referee.

But still, surely after two days of giving it some thought, tens of replays shown across a series of different shows, including in the offices at the FA, Rooney will face up to his actions. Not one bit.

Aside from the injustice that Rooney gets away with violent conduct, the words of Sir Alex Ferguson and assistant Mike Phelan were equally remarkable. Phelan spoke of a “witch-hunt” against Rooney, while Sir Alex said the press “will raise a campaign to get him hung or electrocuted”.

Combined, the words of Sir Alex Ferguson and the inaction of the FA set a tone that needs to be eradicated. Footballers must act as role models and anyone stepping out of line must be brought to justice.

Rooney has evaded discipline. Now will the FA have the strength to stand up to Ferguson? Most likely he will get away scot-free.

Follow me on Twitter – @benjamin_curtis

It wouldn’t be outlandish to say that the magic of the FA Cup has long since fizzled out. It has – and Sir Alex Ferguson’s suggestions yesterday only confirm that change is needed to the nation’s leading cup competition. As it stands, the romance is about as strong as a man presenting his wife with a tatty pair of oven gloves and a VHS copy of Ryan Giggs Secrets and Skills (circa 1994) before whisking her away to the local chippy for cod and mushy peas. The romance of the FA Cup is stale and needs revitalising.

Where to start? Sir Alex believes that a winter break should precede a weekend of cup football and so it should. Not only does this give players a break – and therefore reduces the risk of injury – but also gives fans a chance to recuperate financially and re-energise  their love for the game. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and all that.

With this in mind, how can a winter break improve the FA Cup? Top teams are more likely to use their best players instead of using a cup weekend for resting them. For fans, all attention will be on cup football instead of viewing it as a detour from the Premier League.

I believe it should go further still and result in two or three straight weeks of cup football. Though logistics may be a stumbling block,  a month of FA Cup football (Rounds 3 to 5, with a week to allow for postponements) would focus all eyes on the cup and take away the stigma it has as a distraction from league football. At the very least, rounds should be brought closer together to create a storyline instead of leaving people struggling to remember what went on in previous games.

Other measures that need to come in include moving semi-finals away from Wembley (regardless of financial repurcussions for the FA)  and ensuring every team is playing in the same round over a weekend. That two games are still going through replays in the last two days, regardless of fixture list pile-ups, is simply ridiculous and ruins the event.

Additionally:

• Replays should be kept – vital financial benefit for smaller clubs.
• Seedings should not be introduced as every team should be equal in the draw.
• Draws could be made before the action begins, providing greater excitement (already done in part: today’s draw has been made before Leyton Orient v Arsenal)
• Highlights on earlier in the evening

The ideas above are just that – ideas. Sir Alex Ferguson’s comments should lead to more debate on the topic, as keeping the status quo will mean more half-empty stadia, third-rate team selections and viewing figures continuing to fall. We owe it to the history of the FA Cup that will provide it with a future.

Weak, spineless, ineffective. The list of words could go on. Yesterday’s announcement that the three Pakistani cricketers involved in last summer’s spot-fixing scandal have been found guilty came as no surprise and nor did the news that each has been banned for their actions. But the length of  terms  handed down to Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir are quite extraordinarily lean and only go further to prove how incapable the International Cricket Council has become at running the world game.

This case represented an opportunity for the ICC to send out a strong message to everyone involved in cricket: anyone taking money to perform differently in a game will be caught out, and will be severely punished. Instead, the door has been left ajar for players of the future to risk a few years of their career when a zero-tolerance approach would have made it quite clear that fixing of any level will not stand.

One of the three tribunal judges appointed by the ICC, Sharad Rao, defended the length of bans by saying that “this was spot-fixing not match-fixing and it did not affect the outcome of any game”. Wrong. Whether it be one ball or the result of a game, it deceives those paying to watch. It makes a mockery of team mates and others that have spent all of their lives training, playing and dedicating themselves to being the best. It brings shame on the country they are representing and it brings shame on a sport that has always competed against football for the world’s attention.

The ICC could have put cricket through the dry cleaners this week, but instead opted for a two-minute hand wash. The tainted trio will be out of the game for a number of years; cricket may have missed the chance to ensure that fixing serves a life ban of its own.