Manchester City are demanding an official explanation after the referee responsible for the infamous "Fergie Time" controversy was put in charge of tomorrow's Manchester derby.
Senior officials at Eastlands are so concerned about Martin Atkinson's appointment that, with Roberto Mancini's agreement, they were trying to contact the Premier League's head of referees, Mike Riley, tonight to express their concerns. The club will demand to know why another referee was not appointed.
Atkinson has been switched from Stoke's match against Bolton Wanderers despite being heavily criticised when the teams met at Old Trafford in September. He was the official who awarded four minutes of stoppage time but actually played seven, with Michael Owen scoring a 96th-minute winner for Sir Alex Ferguson's team.
tomorrow's match was due to be officiated by Steve Bennett but he has been on a Uefa course in Romania and contacted the Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL) this afternoon to inform them that he had not been able to fly back because of the Icelandic volcano eruption.
Mancini was not at the club at the time of the earlier game but his predecessor as manager, Mark Hughes, was so incensed by Atkinson's timekeeping that he requested an explanation from the Premier League, and the club was not satisfied with the response. Atkinson was absolved by Riley, and the PGMOL has taken the stance that it cannot be influenced by what it perceives to be unfair criticisms.
Atkinson will go into both dressing rooms before the match to remind the players to do nothing to incite the crowd in what Ferguson described as potentially the most important Manchester derby since he took control of United in 1986.
Ferguson's side are four points behind Chelsea at the top of the league and a defeat would all but end their hopes of a fourth successive title. City are fourth in the league, hoping to qualify for the Champions League, and the club Ferguson derided as "noisy neighbours" have scored 14 times in the last three games.
Six have come from Carlos Tevez, taking his total to 28 in a season when he has been nominated for the Professional Footballers' Association player of the year award, but Ferguson said he had "no regrets" about losing the Argentinian to City, even though Wayne Rooney's ankle injury has been a devastating blow.
"You cannot dispute the fact that he [Tevez] has had a great goalscoring season but I've got no regrets at all. None whatsoever. We tried to buy him but we didn't match the money they wanted [the consortium that owned Tevez's registration] and therefore the boy moved on. There is no bitterness for me. Players leave here – some do well, some don't. You just have to move on."
Ferguson added: "I thought he had a good first season with us, I must admit, but in the second season he didn't feature as much. This is a very big club and there is a big demand here. And he had far more competition with us than he has at City, there is no doubt about that."
City's decision to put up a "Welcome to Manchester" billboard after signing Tevez led Ferguson to describe them as a "small club with a small mentality" and the striker has continued to be a central figure in the rivalry, most notably by describing Gary Neville as a "boot-licking moron".
But Tevez also angered his own club this week with a newspaper interview in which he said the players were "not happy" with Mancini's double training sessions. Mancini will not fine his leading scorer but he will summon him to his office for an explanation. "This week, the most important thing for me has been the game," he said. "I will have time, though, in the coming weeks."
Mancini hopes the striker will regret his remarks. "I know how footballers work. When I was a player [at Sampdoria] I publicly criticised the manager for his training. I would say: 'Oh, this training is no good for us and blah blah blah' but when that manager, [Vujadin] Boskov, was sacked I was sad because I knew he was the best manager and that I had made a mistake. I knew I was wrong."
