Gabriel Martinelli [Alexander Canillas/SPP]

WHAT a week we have seen, starting with Gary Neville amazed that Liverpool’s players did not take a red card and “whack” Gabriel Martinelli for his stupid touchline bobs with Conor Bradley.

Nothing says we don’t want to see behaviour like this more than Sky’s premier gantry pundit, confused as to why more violence isn’t ensuing. Neville, of course, being the full-back who would take pride in kicking lumps out of José Reyes back in the day before exclaiming that he wasn’t tough enough for the English game.

In fact, often you get the impression that the Manchester United bully boys of old almost revel in the idea that their fouls were just part of the game.

Roy Keane never looks too sheepish about crashing into that challenge on Alf-Inge Haaland, and Eric Cantona was even more performatively mercurial than before when he started kung-fu kicking his way through the Crystal Palace crowd.

Now Arsenal players, it seems, have a bit of menace and it’s the worst thing we’ve ever seen in football. It’s a perplexing conundrum.

Not that any of those names will mean much to 20-something readers who ask why everybody keeps going on about a middling team called Man United.

They are not haunted by what we saw. They just see men reciting: But it’s Man United, this is Man United.

Martinelli suffered more because it came at the end of a rain-soaked draw in which Mikel Arteta asked the fans to really show their support for the really big, big match – only for him to settle for a draw. He had to be the talking point, as it was the only talking point. Martinelli was back with a hat-trick against Portsmouth, however – has anyone thought of him playing centre forward?

And then it was off to the Carabao Cup semi-finals to wear out the players trying to win something only Newcastle and Spurs care about.

Tottenham fans, by the way, were in a new war with fellow second-phasers Aston Villa over which is the bigger club – determined, it turns out, by whether Conor Gallagher wants to play for you (and not how much pay he’s been offered).

Money, as always, talks. Man City, fresh after refusing extra shares of the gate receipts to Exeter City for their 10–1 game, responded to three draws in the league with the creative solution of finding another £65million to buy Antoine Semenyo.

You can tell me Pep Guardiola is one of history’s best – but he sure does love to splash the cash.