Why Neville is WRONG about Mark Clattenburg and who ARE the columnists who end up getting the bullet for being bland?

The journey that brought Mark Clattenburg on board with the Daily Mail began in the foyer of a social club in Seaham in 2017.

He was - not for the first time and, as this week shows, not for the last - at the centre of a media storm. The best referee in the world, he was quitting the Premier League for Saudi Arabia halfway through the season. It was back-page news.

Clattenburg, however, had a commitment to give a talk to raise money for a junior football club close to his County Durham home. I bought a ticket and sat at the back of the room. Moments before the scheduled start, he was made aware of my presence and left the stage. He wanted a chat in the foyer. Was I about to get a red card?

Clattenburg was concerned about his words being relayed to the world (I later realised why). So, I offered him my hand and promised that whatever he said was off-limits. I also asked if we could have another chat at the end. He obliged. His talk was so good - no punches pulled and knockout blows landed on some of the game’s biggest names - that I thought he would make an excellent columnist.

Within six months he had joined our stable, relieved that he finally had a voice and was free of the Premier League’s constraints. As he said at the time, ‘If you’re going to dislike me, dislike me for who I really am’.

We celebrated with a lunch in London, during which he and fellow columnist Chris Sutton agreed on almost everything (surprisingly), while he and Martin Keown had some differences (less surprisingly). But that lunch told us this - Clattenburg had all the ingredients to give our readers an honest and punchy insight into the world of refereeing.

For seven years he has done that, a period in which officiating has never been more topical. His words are well read and have, on occasion, sparked rows with Jurgen Klopp, among others.

Earlier this week, he had a choice. Nottingham Forest, the club for whom he is a consultant to the board, had issued an inflammatory statement following their 2-0 defeat at Everton in which they referenced VAR Stuart Attwell’s allegiance to their relegation rivals, Luton Town.

Clattenburg could have reneged on sharing his thoughts but, instead, treated his column as just that, a column in which he analysed key decisions from the game. He was loyal to his relationship with the Mail and our readers.

He has since been criticised for not referencing his Forest connection within it and, were you reading it with no prior knowledge, you would think it merely a former referee giving a fair summation of events. The column, however, means he now faces the prospect of Premier League and Football Association charges.

It is both a strength and weakness of Clattenburg, being so bold. It took him to the top of his profession but courted controversy along the way. It saw him write an autobiography (ghosted by myself) in which he settled old scores with the likes of Howard Webb, David Elleray, Mike Riley, Craig Bellamy and Klopp. It meant he accepted the offer of Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis to work with them. And it meant he wrote his column for the Mail this week - ‘why shouldn’t I share my thoughts?’ was the essence of his response. Forest allegiance aside, the content of his column was in keeping with wider opinion. He did not accuse Attwell of anything - he stated no official would deliberately make a mistake - but he questioned the wisdom of the PGMOL in leaving themselves, and Attwell, open to the fallout.

As ever with Clattenburg, it was strong. Isn’t that what we want from columnists? He, like the Gladiators he now referees on TV, will never hold back. It is why Marinakis values his opinion, even if the Greek billionaire sometimes does not listen.

Clattenburg is not out to abuse his power or manipulate officials, as has been suggested. He doesn’t have any power nor old friendships to manipulate! He works with Forest for the same reason he works with the Mail. Call it what you will - a consultant, an advisor, a voice who says it as he sees it. Is he always right? No. But there’s no bulls**t, blandness or waffle.

Things got pretty hot this week, and Clattenburg got burnt because he did not run for cover. It is why he will be sticking with Forest and, thankfully for our readers, sticking with the Mail.

What makes a good columnist? They always answer their phone? They rarely change the copy? That makes a polite and low maintenance columnist, but not necessarily a good one. If you want the best, you might have to wrestle with an ego every now and then. We have Simon Jordan and Graeme Souness, after all.

The key to being the ghost writer is capturing the voice of the columnist and resisting the temptation to express your own. Readers will very quickly see through it if the ex-sportsman suddenly evolves into the Poet Laureate.

And, invariably, it is now former players who populate these pages. Bobby Moore was England captain when he wrote in the weekly magazine Shoot. Today, current players, especially in football, are controlled by their clubs - they would never be free to express their thoughts with an independent publication on a regular basis.

The Mail have an exception, albeit in rugby. England prop Joe Marler is a riotous read who, like Clattenburg, refuses to apply a filter to his thoughts. During the Six Nations, he would meet our reporter Nik Simon at England’s Pennyhill Park base for a half-hour chat on the sofas, but not before he’d pinched a pudding from the media room.

It is over dessert that the best stories are often told, in the literal and metaphorical sense. Be it the last seconds of a long phone call that produces the headline statement or, and this is more enjoyable, the killer anecdote or opinion shared over an even longer lunch.

Souness is great company in that regard and, I don’t think he’ll mind me saying, has little concern for financial fair play when it comes to the wine list. But developing that relationship, a trust and understanding, is at the heart of a column that pulses with energy, colour and passion. You build a bond while breaking bread.

But perhaps the best example of how a columnist and ghost should co-exist is that of ex-England captain Nasser Hussain and our cricket correspondent Paul Newman. They have worked together for 25 years. So good is Hussain - he knows exactly what he wants to say and the order he wants to say it – that it’s second nature for Newman to commit his friend’s thoughts to print and file them to our London desk.

That, though, is only after Hussain has pored over every detail of the drafted version, advising the most minor of tweaks to make it better. He is, as Newman says, the consummate professional. Not all columnists are like that. One former Premier League manager often said to a colleague, ‘Ah, you know me by now, you write it for me!’.

But while some may be lazy, I’m yet to meet one who doesn’t care about what goes to press under their name. The tweaks can often take longer than the original phone call, and my children are well used to the sound of Souness on our car phone on a Friday afternoon, correcting my attempt to convey his thoughts for Saturday’s newspaper.

But that is what we want, no matter how time-consuming it may be. Jamie Carragher used to call our reporter, Dominic King, and routinely say, ‘Just a couple of things to change…’. That attention to detail went a long way to explaining why his club career spanned 737 games and why he has made such an excellent pundit.

Columnists like Carragher also open doors. It was he who helped arrange an audience with Paolo Maldini and, when he and King pulled up in a taxi outside his home in Italy, even Carragher was starstruck when the Milan legend was waiting to greet them on the doorstep in his jeans and polo shirt.

Micah Richards took us to see Roberto Mancini and, such was his dedication to his column, he would spend three hours in person with our reporter every Thursday morning. Keown has interviewed the likes of Dennis Bergkamp whilst wearing his Mail columnist’s hat and, barring feeding paper into the printing press, Sutton has turned his hand (and mouth) to everything we have asked of him. These are examples of good practice. It does not always go so smoothly.

We once signed Peter Schmeichel but, when the Dane said he was not comfortable talking in his first column about either Manchester club ahead of the derby, we tore up the contract. Another column scrapped belonged to an iconic striker who was asked to rate two teams before a big game, and returned marks of 10/10 for all 22 players.

The Mail’s Ian Ladyman was the ghost for Steve Stone during his days on the Nottingham Evening Post. Stone’s weekly column came out on the same day he left Forest for Aston Villa. There was no mention in the column…

Another colleague, Tom Collomosse, found the words he submitted after a chat with Dawid Malan during the 17/18 Ashes Tour were unrecognisable after going through the cricketer’s PR team. ‘Perception is reality, so they say. Well, this week, the England cricket team must stand up and demonstrate that, in the soulful words of Aretha Franklin, it ain’t necessarily so,’ wrote Malan, or so only a fool would believe.

We know of one high-profile columnist who, busy with other commitments during a World Cup, said to the reporter: ‘Call my son, he knows my views on the subject.’ Meanwhile, a Premier League manager, so merry and collapsed in bed after keeping his team in the division on the final day, was saved by his wife, who stepped in to finish the column when our man phoned.

On the subject of other halves, a colleague called a hotel room in the States to get the words for a twice-weekly dispatch from USA 94 and, when a woman answered, engaged in conversation with who he thought was the columnist’s wife. ‘Who’s Angela?’ said the female on the other end. Said columnist rushed to the phone and asked for an hour to compose his thoughts. Apparently, the words that followed were his best of the tournament, giving a bit extra from inside the dressing-room as a pre-emptive thanks for the ghost’s discretion.

A good ghost is all about discretion, unseen in the shadow of the author. A good columnist is all about divulgence - visible, candid and taking ownership of their opinion. Mark Clattenburg should not be the fall guy for doing just that this week.