On a cold, still day. The referee blew his whistle. The goal was as open as a prairie. A real Spaghetti Western cameo. You could almost hear the tinkling music. The game was tied, 1-1. But Malbranque remained motionless, grappling with the moral dilemma of whether to shoot a man in the back. Accepting the minor sanction of a yellow card for time-wasting, Barthez then finally took up the correct position between the posts. Malbranque finally shot. Barthez saved, low to his right. Mind Games 1, Manners 0.
"Cheat," some cried. But surely this little comedy said more about Fulham than it did Barthez and his rule-bending eccentricities. An Alan Shearer, say, would have wandered off for a chat with a team-mate; waited for the ref to impose order on the clown. Shearer's first thought would have been that no bald thespian was going to deny him a Premiership goal by scraping imaginary mud off his boots on a post. It was not the vaudeville from Barthez that cost Fulham a second goal but Malbranque's inability or refusal to pull the trigger.’