The day I wanted to strangle fans who abused me, writes SIMON JORDAN

Kalvin Phillips was on the receiving end of fans’ ire last weekend and reacted in a stupid, albeit, human way.

By sticking up his middle finger at a critical West Ham supporter, Phillips amplified the situation and made himself the story.

But without wishing to justify or excuse the jeering fan, I’m afraid that sort of thing goes with the territory of being a professional footballer.

Would I like football fans to behave better? Of course I would but I’d also to not have swindlers, con artists or knife crime in society. Come to think of it, as a Londoner, I’d also like not to have to put up with that God-awful mayor of London Sadiq Khan and his dreadful initiatives and agendas. But we don’t live in the ideal world, we live in the real world.

Fans are the lifeblood of the game. Apparently we want them to be full of emotion and we want them to care deeply about their clubs. Unfortunately, all that comes with a flipside. It’s like the old Scorpion and the Frog fable. The scorpion promises not to sting the frog but does it anyway because that’s what scorpions do.

So what are we asking football fans to be? We want them to be highly-charged and full of blind loyalty to their football clubs because that’s what makes the game so special. People are celebrated and vilified in equal measure but that is all part of the emotional alchemy that fuels football.

Phillips is not alone, sometimes footballers react to provocation. Do we expect the emotion to be taken out of a footballer and that such emotion is only the precinct of fans because they are paying and supporting their side while players are paid to perform and entertain and therefore ultimately fair game for criticism, no matter how over the top?

Ideally, we’d all like a more polite