THERE were calls for Kevin Bond to be sacked after just two games in charge at Dean Court. Now he is ramming the critics' words back down their throats, with Cherries having won three in a row, and tantalisingly close to staying up.

I hope England boss Steve McClaren is soon able to do the same.

There's something deeply unpleasant about the hate campaign being carried out against McClaren - and the thugs of Fleet Street (or rather, Canary Wharf) are just as much to blame as the shirtless, tattooed, beer-bellied oafs effing and blinding on foreign terraces.

What happened to a sense of perspective, fair play, the stiff upper lip we used to be famed for?

No one forces these people to travel to Tel Aviv or Barcelona. If they want to waste their money following an under-achieving team, that's up to them. I spent good money taking two of the children to see Mr Bean's Holiday, and, although sorely tempted, I didn't shout abuse or chuck popcorn at the screen.

So what gives these football hooligans the right to heap all that opprobrium on a man who, while quite possibly out of his depth, is clearly doing his best?

And how do you expect the players to perform, when you're yelling at them they're not fit to wear the shirt? (At least the shirt fits them, by the way, whereas there aren't even tents big enough to cover the naked torsos of some of the charmless specimens strutting their surly stuff in the Olympic Stadium the other night.) Sir Alex Ferguson, bizarrely, blames Simon Cowell and his ilk for the fear and loathing, saying that TV judges are rude and sneering. Maybe, but I reckon it goes deeper than that.

Fergie himself - famous for his red-faced tantrums and petty vendetta against the BBC - isn't blameless. And the way he, Wenger, Mourhinho and the rest harangue referees is hardly setting a good example, is it?

Nor is fans' darling Wayne Rooney the greatest role model, and if even Andorra can nullify his threat by treading on his toes and whispering not-so-sweet-nothings in his ear, then he'll never emulate Bobby Charlton, who was kicked from pillar to post, but simply got up, swept that strand of hair over his shiny head and got on with it.

Sir Bobby, of course, survived the Munich disaster of 1958, and knows that football is far from life and death, despite what Sky might like us to think.

It's even spreading to cricket, where Freddie Flintoff can zoom from hero to zero, and where Pakistan fans burn effigies of their coach one day, and set up shrines the next.

There's simply no in-between any more. Winning is everything and losing (or even drawing) is seen as a cue for scorn.

Maybe I should stick up for my colleagues on the nationals, but, hey, why bother? They're having great fun sucking up to the sort of supporters who so blighted the game in the 1970s, and trying to get McClaren sacked.

But who do they suggest would do a better job? More pertinently, perhaps, given the toxic atmosphere surrounding England's football team, who on earth would possibly want it?