Jeff Winter recalls key Sir Alex Ferguson moment and makes shock handball admission

In the fourth part of a Ladbrokes: Fanzone exclusive, former Premier League referee Jeff Winter discusses Sir Alex Ferguson, the handball rule and the title race.

In part one he reignites his feud with Danny Mills, in part two he discusses his experiences as a top-flight official and in part three he lays into VAR.

Sir Alex Ferguson berated me after a huge decision I made early in my career…

It’s so funny, the managers’ opinion of you. Martin O’Neill is a great example. I once refereed a game when he was managing Wycombe Wanderers. Well, it was a game I didn’t referee, actually. I called a game off over at Chester because the pitch was frozen over. And when I was speaking to the managers, I explained it was a safety issue, and he was so complimentary about me. And about three months later we went back and played that postponed game. He was still their manager, and I was still the referee for the rearranged fixture. And halfway through the game I’m sure he was berating me for a decision I’d made!

I had the ultimate respect for Sir Alex Ferguson as a manager. He started, restarted, and rebuilt Manchester United on several occasions. But he was very clever. His comments about referees weren’t always about the game in question today, they were to try and influence future decisions.

As a football fan, I want a manager of Sir Alex’s capability managing my club, so I fully understood him. Very early in my career, I refereed Manchester United away to Ipswich, right at the beginning of the season. I got surrounded by three Man United players, and I issued three yellow cards for dissent. I was a new referee and he castigated me for that decision. Who the hell did I think I was, and all of that kind of thing. But I’ll tell you something, three Manchester United players didn’t surround me in a game throughout the rest of my career.

There were other guys you just didn’t get on with. In football management, you get people like Joe Royle, the late, great, Sir Bobby Robson… absolute, utter gentlemen. Football people who, don’t get me wrong, could lose their temper. But they’d stay in control with it.

You had others that did if for effect, and others that just didn’t like you.

I don’t know what a handball is anymore… John Terry blurred the lines for me

I don’t know what a handball is anymore. To me, handball was the deliberate act of moving your hand towards the ball. Deliberately, to stop the ball. It was quite easy to follow. It started to become a little bit more complicated with John Terry. I don’t want to pick on him, but he always tends to stick in my mind when I think of the handball rule.

Apart from being an unbelievable defender, he was clever in that when he was coming out to defend, he used the old Peter Schmeichel philosophy. He made himself bigger, so he would slightly extend his arms away from his body, to make the target bigger. And the ball driven at him would bang off his arm but it wouldn’t go past him. You could possibly say he’s prevented a goal in doing that, but the argument back then was whether or not that was considered a deliberate act. But those weren’t given – he wasn’t penalised.

Nowadays, some of the handballs we’re seeing, you know, you’re virtually going to end up with players tying their hands behind their backs. It’s just gone farcical.

And how they can keep chopping and changing interpretations halfway through a season, it’s crazy. It might be a bit extreme, but it’s like saying ‘OK then, after Christmas, it’s four points for a win, and it’s two points for a draw’. Forget the other part of the season, we’re changing the rules, we’re changing the guidelines, call them what you want. If you’re going to do something, do it at the start of the season and stick with it.

Yes, I’ve been involved in football all of my life, first as a fan, then as a very low league player – I’m talking about playing in pubs, parks and gardens – and as a match official for 25 years before going back to being what I was when I started out: a fan… but I have never, in all of that time, even when I didn’t know all of the laws and interpretations, I’ve never been more confused. And if I’m confused, then so are the players, because most of them don’t know the laws of the game, and you can put managers into the same category.

You know, to me, I can’t sum it up any harsher than to say this… these changes are spoiling my enjoyment of watching top level football.

The one thing I would say to anyone thinking of taking up refereeing is this: refereeing is certainly not just for Christmas; it’s for life. You know, I go to watch games nowadays as a fan, and when something controversial happens on the pitch, heads turn towards me. I always used to say “look, I’m 80 yards away… if I was stood two yards away I might’ve had a better chance of telling you!” When you’re sat in the stand of a football ground and something happens in the far corner… please don’t ask me for my opinion!

Title race

When you look at the Aston Villa game, you think to yourself, ‘surely their run is going to come to an end, sooner or later’. And if it was going to come to an end, you’d have thought Arsenal at Villa Park would’ve been the perfect opportunity. But fair play to Villa, they outfought them, they outplayed them, and it was a deserved victory, you have to say.

I don’t support any teams in the heady heights of the Premier League. But I always admire Manchester City for the way they play their football. Leicester City winning the title a few years back was probably a one-off, but to see Aston Villa up there right now is fantastic. If it hadn’t have been for Tottenham’s injuries in the last few weeks, they could’ve been right up there. I just hope that – whoever wins it – it’s a close race right up until the very end.