Limiting health and safety measures may be a current discussion point at government level but columnist Giles Smith calls for new ones at Stamford Bridge, and not without good cause...
People have been asking, since the weekend and that horrible, leg-breaking tackle on Newcastle's Hatem Ben Arfa by the serially offending Nigel de Jong of Manchester City, whether football is becoming unacceptably dangerous.
Has the risk of serious physical injury grown to the point where it is no longer tolerable as merely the inevitable, if unfortunate, by-product of a contact sport? Can anything be done to legislate against the game's seemingly increasing levels of peril?
These are important questions, clearly. And I suspect the concerned fan will want to look, in this area, at free kicks by Alex, too.
Yes, I appreciate that nobody has got hurt - yet. But, since Sunday, when the ball came within centimetres of removing the heads of at least two Arsenal players standing in the wall, it had been emphatically clear that an Alex free kick now officially represents one of the game's clearest and most present dangers.
That's the second time in as many games that our centre back has gone 'Code Red' from a dead ball situation. The first time, against Marseille in the Champions League, the ball was stopped by a post, thus preventing almost certain carnage in Row D of the Matthew Harding Lower, involving (but not necessarily limited to) the absolute ruin of someone's hotdog.
The second time, against Arsenal, the ball, apparently en route for Earls Court, was finally intercepted, still smoking, by the net - though I'm still not entirely sure how, nor why, even after the net failed to disintegrate, the impact didn't end up lifting the entire frame of the goal and repositioning it somewhere around row M, again with possibly dire consequences for people seated in the vicinity and their hotdogs.
Incidentally, it's traditional to moan about how badly-made things are these days, by comparison with the way they were manufactured in the past, and how traditional craftsmanship has (quite literally) gone the way of the horse and cart. So let's at least take this welcome opportunity to make a heart-gladdening exception in the case of the goal nets at Stamford Bridge, which are self-evidently more robust than they have ever been (and certainly more robust than the ones which let in that Alan Hudson 'goal that never was' against Ipswich in the 1970-71 season).
Still, with Alex absolutely on fire at the moment and the obvious contender, from this point in, to take any free kick awarded within his natural range (ie, anywhere technically north of Battersea Bridge), you don't need to be an overly anxious person to spot the potential for an imminent catastrophe - at the point, say, when the centre back again catches one absolutely right but aims it just inches wide.
Fore-armed is everything in these situations, which is why we propose implementing forthwith the following simple, Alex-related safety measures at Stamford Bridge (and at any other grounds which are willing and far-sighted enough to back our initiative).
Spectators most at risk, with seats in the immediate vicinity of the goals at both ends, could be issued with a Kevlar-based, riot shield-style device. It could be stowed under the seat when not in use, and could feature a transparent area near the top, so that one could continue to watch the game while the shield was deployed, and take any further evasive action, as necessary.
Meanwhile, specially trained marksmen could be positioned at key points high in the relevant stands, whose duty it would be to 'take out' the ball the moment it left the playing area and began to pose a direct threat to the public. (These marksmen would have to move pretty sharpish, obviously, but isn't that the whole point of marksmen?)
The marksmen could also help the stewards organise an evacuation after the awarding of the free kick, if this was considered, at the time, to be the safest course.
With those simple steps implemented, the worst of the peril would be averted and Alex would be free to continue endangering the heads of Arsenal defenders (and anyone else who draws the short straw, in terms of wall-forming) with an entirely clear conscience, knowing that at least the innocent weren't going to suffer.
How you annul the danger represented by Nigel de Jong, on the other hand, defeats me, although Bert Van Marwijk, the coach of Holland, seems to be onto something. He has dropped him.
On the subject of foreign squads, it won't have escaped your notice that the Premier League is once again suspended and that, as a consequence, we are forced yet again to make our own entertainment at the weekend, as if these were Victorian times.
Incredible. Merely three weeks after the regrettable intrusion of the September international week, we find ourselves only just inside October and confronted by another one - though this time with a pathetic added twist: it's an international week without an international in it. (England, at any rate, aren't playing until the following Tuesday.)
These crude interruptions to the season's flow, just when we are clearly on a roll and Manchester United are struggling to come away with a point from Sunderland, seem to me worse than unhelpful. If anything in the modern game is screaming for an intervention by the legislators, the scandal of disruptive international weeks - with or without internationals in them, but especially without - surely is it.
Meanwhile, on Saturday, I intend to gather my family around the piano in the parlour for some singing, after which we will go out and hit a hoop with a stick. Well, what else is there to do in times like these?
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