IT WAS an enormous pleasure to see Frank Lampard sent off in Chelsea’s game against West Ham yesterday. That’s because I don’t like him. I don’t like his perpetually put-upon expression, nor his apparent conviction that he is a sort of magical amalgam of Garrincha, Bobby Charlton and Franz Beckenbauer, when actually he’s Jimmy Bullard with an only slightly better haircut.

I hate it when he looks aggrieved during England games at Wembley, just after a shot of his ends up somewhere near Southall, as if fate had cruelly intervened to deflect a brilliant goalbound effort towards the North Circular and none of it is his fault at all or the consequence of him being not very good.

I hate those postmatch conferences where he explains how well he has played when England have been beaten at home by the Maldives. So seeing him sent off is always an enormous pleasure, especially - and this is the point - when the decision is utterly unjustified, as it was against West Ham. Then, the pleasure is enhanced because Lampard is forced to find an even greater depth of grief in his facial expression, because he has been genuinely hard done by.

Chronic and preferably cruel injustice is a much underestimated attraction in football. It's one of the reasons I never want cameras on the goalline; goals are fun and exciting, of course, but they are not so much fun as the cretin of a referee, acting under FA orders, who makes a monumentally absurd decision.

Injustice is one of the few things left in the English game that makes it worth forking out £50 for - or in my team’s case, £20 - to watch for 90 minutes. At the precise time Frank Lampard was erroneously sent off, my own team, Millwall, were having a perfectly good goal disallowed by a jackass of a referee who has become a serial offender. Never mind; this is the hand of fate, and footballers need to be reminded from time to time that the hand of fate will occasionally intervene and spoil their day. They think that they are all-conquering, the players, and it’s nice to bring them down to earth occasionally.

However, all this being said, there is a certain kind of pirouetting, flouncy and camp Premier League referee in the game right now who wishes nothing more than to send someone off and to enjoy his moment in the sun for having done so, like an understudy in the musical Cabaret suddenly allowed into the limelight.

The Lampard business was truly mystifying; he tangled, briefly, and without great effect, with Luis Boa Morte (no angel, mark you) - both of them on the ground - and then had the temerity to push the bloke away, having received a bit of a kick. At which point the red card was airily wafted in his general direction. Now, cackle though I did, I could see that it was a consummately unjust sending-off. In a way, this made me laugh all the more.

But for all this sniggering, there is a certain pattern beginning to emerge, which you might hope the FA or the Premier League would get a grip of. This week Frank Lampard, a week or so back, Middlesbrough’s Jeremie Aliadiere - both sent off for offences that may, I suppose, transgress the letter of the law but which in earlier times would have warranted nothing more than a sharp word from the referee.

Aliadiere, having appealed against his monstrously unjust red card, will now serve a longer ban than that which will apply to Birmingham City’s Martin Taylor, who effected a hasty, ad hoc amputation upon Arsenal’s Eduardo last Saturday at St Andrews, much to Arsène Wenger’s chagrin. Middlesbrough’s appeal rebounded upon them, because that’s the way the Football Association works. It doesn’t like appeals. But once again you might be tempted to suspect that the FA does not know what it is doing.

I think I speak for quite a few fans when I venture that the FA has got its priorities wrong. I would like to see players sent off for cheating - in the case of Manchester United’s Cristiano Ronaldo, at some point within the third minute of every match - and for tackles that are either clearly malicious or criminally negligent. Or indeed for players who have been hacking out at the opposing winger from the moment the referee blew his whistle at the start of the game. By and large, though, a bit of shoving here or there should not warrant even so much as a booking.

Much as it grieves me to say so about such a player, but Lampard was entirely justified in his modest admonition towards West Ham’s Boa Morte.

The FA, I suppose, will say that he raised a hand and therefore deserves all that he got. But this is taking a literal interpretation of the rules altogether too far. Lampard deserved to stay on the pitch yesterday: so did Aliadiere for Middlesbrough.

Less central control and instead the deployment of that long-forgotten thing, common sense, would be of benefit to the Premier League. Even if it does mean that Lampard escapes a ban and is allowed back to look aggrieved the next time Chelsea take to the field.