Why Gary Neville is WRONG about Mark Clattenburg... and who ARE the columnists who end up getting the bullet?

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.