ANOTHER WEEKEND, another football manager is livid about refs. This time it is Mike Newell, the manager of Luton Town.

Newell thought his team should have been awarded a penalty in their game against Queen’s Park Rangers. It happens all the time. Had the penalty been given, the manager of QPR would have been cross instead.

Newell proudly called himself sexist and laid the blame for his side’s 3-2 defeat at the feet (or rather the flag) of Amy Rayner, the female assistant referee.

“What are women doing here?” Newell asked. “It is tokenism for the politically correct idiots.” At last, a manager prepared to go beyond the standard insult, a manager who has found a genetic explanation for the alleged ineptitude of football officials.

Go for it, Mike, bring it on. Tell us how women’s brains are smaller than those of men, give us the details of the research that proves that women cannot grasp the offside rule, tell us about all those female referees who blow the final whistle 10 minutes early so they can make a hair appointment.

“I am sexist,” Newell said. Yes, Mike, and like many football managers you are serving up yet another lame excuse for the defeat of your team. Your claim that you were taking referee bashing to a new level is contemptible.

The insult is pathetic in its lack of imagination. Amy Rayner is a woman, he rails. True enough, though doubtless the more observant of his audience had noted that already. It was a gibe as telling as the old cliché about refs needing their eyesight testing.

Managers resort to all manner of gripes against the officials. Referees are arrogant, biased, cowardly or just plain inept. It is all becoming boring. When a football manager has witnessed his team playing poorly, instead of blaming his players he immediately finds a scapegoat in the officials.

Last week the referee in the news was Graham Poll. Poll is supposed to be the best referee in the country and represented England at the World Cup, but his expertise has been called into question after his decision to send off John Terry, the England captain, while he was playing for Chelsea against Spurs. Obviously the Chelsea manager, José Mourinho, missed a trick when he considered Poll’s flaws. He should have called him a woman.