Alternatively, one can take the view that many, if not all, of the points he makes can be classified as uncomfortable truths. Although many of the red card incidents which get totted up joyfully by second-rate commentators ("...the 88th dismissal under Arsene Wenger!!!") seem to Arsenal fans, myself included, to be unusually harsh, there are plenty more that are probably beyond dispute.

So although it may be tough to admit, it is unlikely that too many gooners woke up this morning genuinely shocked by the FA's actions -- and not just because we can be cynical about the FA, but because there is a trend here, like it or not.

However, what rankles the most is not the fines, suspensions, or even the one-sidedness of the FA charges. Although I must admit I didn't see too much wrong at the time, during the match, when the joy at having rescued a point at the final whistle was joined with delight at RVN having missed the pen, the violence and goading was not OK. While it is true that as one paper put it, Martin Keown's mug doesn't do him any favours as opposed to say Michael Owen (might say the same for Keane), those closing moments are harder and harder to watch.

What rankles is the sense that these incidents, and the 51 red cards that preceded them, are viewed in some kind of vacuum.

The first of the 52 red cards divides the Wenger from the pre-Wenger eras. Fair enough. But it also divides Arsenal history between having a mainly English and having a mainly foreign first XI. The disciplinary system takes no notice of whether players are more statistically likely to be provoked, kicked, goaded or insulted into lashing out because they are a) "foreign" or b) black, nor whether referees are more prone to issue yellows and reds to a Lauren than they are to a Scholes. Would Solskjaer have been dismissed had his and Campbell's roles been reversed in that dubious red card last season? I rate Solskjaer, but the fact that he looks like a paper-boy has saved his bacon on more than one occasion.

Of course neither of these issues were likely involved on Sunday, unless you take the view that RVN's following-through on Patrick was yet another attempt to wind the great man up. Sunday, instead, was set in an altogether human and understandable context. I can understand it because as I watched each incident I felt much of what the Arsenal players must have felt, pontificating about "discipline" and "shame" aside:

1. Vieira's sending off was based on a trivial incident for the first yellow and an over-reaction for the second, amplified to 10/10 by RVN's shock-horror reaction. Vieira's kick was not really an innocent flinch. Judgemental tirades aside, the truth is likely that Vieira snapped and kicked out NOT because Arsene Wenger has somehow failed to instill a code of chivalry at London Colney, but because van Nistelrooy mixes great talent with irritating gamesmanship on a daily basis. Say what you want about Pires, RVN manages to inspire almost as much contempt as Sheringham at Arsenal without even opening his mouth. Villa fans will know how we feel after the Dublin-Savage incident last year. Yes, Dublin lost it. Deserved red. But yes, Savage went down like a B-movie cattle rustler.

2. The penalty. Whether you're playing them, or playing elsewhere hoping some other team can get a result against them, Man U's knack of getting timely penalties at home is just something you come to expect. Was in no way clearcut -- Forlan and Keown fell sideways together, and I can't imagine anyone in the ground, Utd or Arsenal, was surprised to see him go down. This is where we get back to that "vacuum" issue. Equally as "disappointing," "sickening" or "telling" as Arsenal's 52 red cards is the beneficial treatment afforded "the biggest club in the world."

Recall the sequence of events leading to Keane's ban last year. First, he loses his nut with Andy Durso -- flap in the press, but nothing happens. Then, he deliberately tries to put Haaland out of action for good. In ice hockey, whacking a player on the head with a hockey stick, deliberately, will see you out of the game for a year. The FA gave Keane four games. The only thing which persuaded them that a louder message was required was Keane's explicit detailing of his motivations in his "auto"-biography the next year, plus the negative publicity he had garnered from the World Cup which gave them some leeway.

Add that to the persistent unpunished diving of RVN. Never got the stick that Pires has gotten. Let's remember who got the most stick in the Keown-RVN incident in a previous match.

Add that to the statistics of home v. away penalties given at Old Trafford. It's a scandal. When Juventus get bizarre decisions at just the right time the British media tut-tut about quaint Italian-style behaviour. When it happens here it gets noted in passing.

3. The penalty miss. I don't care what Mark Palios says, when he hit the bar, the words springing involuntarily out of my lips were "yes, you b*****d." The injustice of losing a key match to a dubious penalty, at the Theatre of Penalties, scored by a chronically unsporting s.o.b. who had already played his part in getting Vieira dismissed seemed almost comically painful as van Nistelrooy lined up the kick. The joy at his being thwarted was loaded with schadenfreude. How could it not be? Despite the unfairness and inevitability of it all, he choked at the critical moment. Is there really no-one at the FA, or the broadsheets, other than perhaps Richard Williams, who can understand how Keown must have felt?

Trouble is, that's where the sympathy ends because although part of me was tempted to rush to the television and make rude gestures, the rest of me (like Martin) is 38 years old rather than six.

So Smudger is right -- as Arsenal fans we need to acknowledge that no provocation can justify the mobbing of van Nistelrooy at the end, which to me was really the only moment in which that game stood out from countless other incidents of argy-bargy.

But his message to Arsenal can't be taken on board by the fans without some recognition that the world hadn't been created at 3:59 pm that afternoon; that for every "shameful" Vieira red card since 1996 there have been probably five matches where he was kicked and goaded relentlessly, let alone Dennis Bergkamp before him, another "dirty" player whom referees failed to protect; that Man Utd's unpunished teflon character grates with their rivals -- did I mention the kick-athon at the start of last year's FA cup tie? or Gary Neville or Quinton Fortune on Sunday?; and that Keown's reaction, however horrifying to the blazers and pundits, would have been (if not endorsed) utterly understandable to legions of fans and players from many clubs.

He lost it. He shouldn't have. But it's not like it came from nothing.