Jeff Winter

He's the no-nonsense ref that gives it to you straight, doesn't suffer fools, pulls no punches and other clichés like this. He is Jeff Winter and he's our new best friend...

Who were the worst players to referee?

Down the years the players who I had least joy with when it came to holding a sensible conversation were Danny Mills and Thomas Repka at West Ham. I always found his attitude was just conflict, whether you were talking about throw-in, a free kick or whatever.

And what about managers you had bother with?

In my day there was the mind games, and Sir Alex was obviously one of the best, I had a few run-ins at times with Martin O'Neill but I can tolerate Martin, because it was just pure emotion with him, he eats, sleeps breathes football. Probably one that I had least time and respect for was David O'Leary. He obviously didn't like me and probably didn't like any of the referees, but he was insincere in a greasy way, "How are you? Nice journey?" You felt like saying, f*** off, you're not interested in whether I had a nice journey or not, because in 90 minutes time you're going to be calling me worse than sh*t because you disagreed with a decision I made.