Grudges the motive for pitch battle

Kevin McCarra finds a number of this weekend's fixtures holding potential for some fireworks to rival the Manchester United v Arsenal encounter.

Manchester United and Arsenal hoard much of the Premiership's wealth, but these clubs hold no monopoly on animosity. The entire fixture list is a tangle of sensitive personal histories, long-cherished grudges and wounded feelings. This weekend presents us with a perfect set of case studies.

The meeting of Birmingham City and Crystal Palace this afternoon may, for example, be a rather unappetising prospect for the general public, but many of the people who will assemble at St Andrews can barely wait to get their teeth into it.

The fans who have travelled from the south will vilify Steve Bruce. Having taken the manager's post at Selhurst Park in the summer of 2001, he soon spoke of his happiness at finding a club where he felt wanted. The fondness cannot have been reciprocated all that strongly by him because he left for Birmingham at the end of the year.

Any spare antagonism in the visiting support today can be directed at Julian Gray. He declined to sign a new contract with Palace, who therefore received no fee when he opted, as a free agent, to be reunited with Bruce at St Andrews. The crowd, all the same, are not the only ones with an excuse to brood.

The Palace midfielder Michael Hughes was fleetingly on Birmingham's books. He went there on loan from Wimbledon in March 2002. Although he then injured his ankle, it was his understanding he was guaranteed a longer-term deal if Birmingham achieved promotion to the Premiership that season, as they duly did.

Instead, Hughes soon required financial support from the Professional Footballers Association as the dispute kept him out of football for 16 months until he received compensation from Birmingham. Fellow professionals sympathised, but the Northern Ireland international will not expect unmitigated solidarity from them today.

His excessive challenge on Robbie Savage provoked a reaction as both of them were sent off in the 2-2 draw with Wales at the Millennium Stadium last month. There was some sympathy with the argument Savage, for once, was the wronged party. A player who frequently seems to be at odds with the rest of the human race was soon heard invoking his own human rights when a one-match ban was imposed.

This is a week when there have been several demonstrations that combativeness is part of the life force of football. It is pointless and even hypocritical to be scandalised when the contentiousness that makes the sport so exciting to us smashes through its flimsy boundaries. Should good manners be maintained at St Andrews, with Palace's Andy Johnson stifling an impulse to gloat if he happens to score against the club that off-loaded him, we ought to pause and appreciate how much decorum survives despite all the provocative factors.

There are more and more causes of friction. Now that Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester United have virtually separated themselves from the remainder of the Premiership, the games between them are breeding grounds for obsession. When Arsenal went to Old Trafford last weekend, every detail of their previous visit a year before was vivid in their minds.

It was all too simple for them to resume the antagonism with Ruud van Nistelrooy that had arisen in the 2003 match. If Arsenal are guilty of throwing food and soup in the tunnel afterwards their conduct was pathetic as well as wrong, but no one should be surprised when incidents get out of control in a competition so overblown that a tussle for three points can be deemed the game of the decade.

In the Premiership, everything tends to be expanded until it becomes unignorable. Jamie Carragher seems ready to act with dispassionate professionalism today when he faces Blackburn's Lucas Neill, who broke the Liverpool full back's leg last year, but the Anfield audience may not be so inclined to let bygones be bygones, particularly if the visitors are doing well.

Football is being asked to suppress an ever-increasing potential for uproar. The sport is operated in a rampantly commercial manner yet it is marketed with an appeal to old-fashioned ties and feelings. Spectators are urged to flaunt their devotion to their clubs, but at the same time it is guaranteed that they will be betrayed sooner or later.

Clubs seek to transfer players while they can still get a fee for them and the footballers depart in search of improvement or just their next signing-on fee.

The behaviour of some of the West Ham fans at Chelsea on Wednesday was despicable, but there were ready targets for the louts. Although Mateja Kezman was hit by a coin, objects were also thrown at Joe Cole and Frank Lampard, who used to be on the Upton Park payroll.

In so many matches nowadays, the line-up for the opposing team borders on a roll call of hate figures. This afternoon the Spurs midfielder Sean Davis goes back to Fulham, where he claimed not so long ago to see his entire future. As the game at St Andrews shows, the moves that players make often string a cat's cradle of resentments across the land.

Football is a mobile profession. The Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho understood the consequences well enough to beg UEFA not to take action against his former club when a Porto fan spat on him a month ago. The general restraint of people in football is more noteworthy than the occasional eruptions.

We ask those in the game to endure loathing, to commit all their emotional reserves and, in the case of the players, to be constantly aggressive while stopping a hair's breadth short of mayhem. All in all, the FA can count itself lucky that there are so few outrages to be investigated.