Chick Young's view

It all depends on your point of view. Speaking personally, I find the middle distance is a good area on which to focus.

It comes with the territory. If you are opinionated - and football writers who aren't are about as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike - then people are going to be opinionated about you.

And they don't always say it with flowers.

On the rare occasions when fans aren't up for reasoned debate, I tend to play deaf and look to the distant horizon.

I've lost the burst of pace I once had and frankly I'm a writer, not a fighter.

Now it's clear that it's time Gordon Strachan and Gary Pendrey took some lessons in that kind of zen.

In 30 years of his acquaintance I have never seen Strachan so distressed about an incident.

Even Artmedia didn't leave him as shell-shocked as the Battle of the Pittodrie Dugout.

He was ashen as he paced the corridors around the dressing rooms where once he was worshipped by the red faithful.

But then, it's a changing world. And fans have short memories.

I was just a few feet from the technical areas on Sunday and there is no doubt that the visiting staff were taking big time verbal volleys from customers in the main stand.

Much it of it was good natured. Plenty was not.

Aberdeen went ahead and the swaggering bravado was despatched, common practice at any ground in the land.

It can, for example, be a long jog for subs of visiting teams at Parkhead trying to do a warm-up.

But the mood changed when Celtic took the lead.

Pendrey couldn't resist indicating that his team were now 2-1 ahead which involved the employment of fingers more associated with another term of endearment.

I thought it was funny. But it was probably ill-advised. His audience certainly didn't warm to him.

But what happened next was ridiculous.

A steward, looking suspiciously like a cross between Fulton Mackay's Mr Mackay in Porridge and Ford Kiernan's Jack in Still Game, launched himself into the attack.

And Strachan reacted like Vesuvius, accusing the Pittodrie employee of being a liar.

Meanwhile, the game raged on... at least until referee Charlie Richmond realised that the action on the pitch was in danger of becoming the sideshow.

I'll tell you this, Strachan was drained by the affair.

Ten minutes after the final whistle his anger was still effervescing as he declined to do a post-match interview for the BBC - a first - instead pulling me into a corridor to explain: "That incident wiped the life out of me."

Pendrey, meanwhile, had the look of the naughty schoolboy who did it and ran away, leaving his big brother to sort it out.

Football players and managers don't forsake their human rights when they trot down the tunnel and contrary to the belief of some, the laws of the land still apply in football stadiums.

So does basic human decency.

There is a pressure on football managers that few of us really comprehend and no matter the rewards I don't think your private life is ever really for sale.

Charlie Christie discovered that there is no hiding place in Inverness when you in charge of a club who are dancing on the quicksand of relegation.

He decided his wife and family came first. Some would call the decision courageous, but maybe it was no contest.

I'll bet it ran through the mind of Strachan in the sanctuary of his own home on Sunday night that maybe this wasn't worth it, that much as he loved the game he wasn't that fond of the lunatics who attach themselves to it.

He has walked away before, he could do it again.

This is sport. It is supposed to be entertainment. Fun, indeed.

Pendrey should maybe have known better, but then once upon a time banter was legitimate in our game.

And the game is suddenly looking just a little less beautiful...

Source: BBC Sport