Referee fails at his job, so FA charge Villa and Tottenham

You certainly remember the 66th-minute fracas in Sunday's match between Aston Villa and Tottenham. You know, the one that saw Eric Lamela plow into Christian Benteke, Ryan Mason shove his head in Benteke's face, Benteke put a hand to Mason's face, and then Benteke get a red card?

Well, if you remember that, you must remember the preceding 10-15 minutes, in which the match got entirely out of hand. Players were making rash tackles left and right (I especially am thinking of Vertonghen's stupid challenge, but there were plenty of others from both teams). Those were the minutes in which referee Neil Swarbrick could have taken control of the match and calmed things down. Those were the minutes in which he did nothing.

The FA have decided that they will, after the inexplicable failure of their employee to perform his job and control the match, charge both Tottenham and Aston Villa with failure to "ensure their players conducted themselves in an orderly fashion." Put into normal words, that really should read: "The FA are charging Aston Villa and Tottenham for the inevitable after their referee hid his head in the sand."

No word yet on what the punishment for either club would be, but we can take two things from this.

1. There is no way Christian Benteke will be winning an appeal on his red card.
2. The FA are a bigger bunch of idiots than we ever could have imagined.