Of all the players he came across while officiating matches all over the globe, Howard Webb has picked Craig Bellamy as the grumpiest one.

Webb says that Bellamy might not be a grumpy fellow off the ground, but, on the ground, as a referee you could see the grumpy side of him when you passed a verdict against his team. Whichever position he was at, he would straightaway run to you and let you know how wrong a decision you made and you could not explain your point to him because he would not pay any attention to what you had to say. He would just speak his own thing. So in that way he was the toughest to handle.

Webb talks up a couple of more names whom he thought were pretty expressive and reactive, the likes of Robby Savage and others, but, as per him, those players were willing to at least have a conversation and to know referee’s point of view rather than just speaking himself and that’s something he liked.

As long as someone was coming to him with a question and was seeking an explanation, he was fine, but, with Bellamy, it was not like that. He wouldn’t come and seek an explanation; he would just come to give the referee an earful, that’s it.

There is already a lot of hatred for Webb among the Liverpool supporter groups for his so called ‘favouritism’ towards United when he was in his job and now with him saying such things about Bellamy, who was a one-time star on the Merseyside, it’s only going to get worse and he now does not seem to have any chance of receiving any presents from the Reds faithful in the coming Christmas.