Let's string him up.

It's absolutely ridiculous, these Johnny Foreigners coming over here, taking our women and sullying our game.

I don't care whether that clumsy so-and-so Jonathan Woodgate actually fouled him or not, Cristiano Ronaldo dived and he should be hung for his crimes to football.

If you've been listening to radio phone-ins this week or read some of the more, shall we say, sensationalist' papers that's probably a fair reflection of the opinions expressed.

Since Ronaldo won a penalty - and the game - for United on Monday night and Middlesbrough subsequently spat their dummy out, it appears the witch-hunt has started again.

Suddenly all the problems within our game are down to the influx of cheating foreigners - Franny Lee anyone? - and we must all save our souls by hounding them out of the country.

To be honest, I saw this coming.

I knew from the reaction of George Boateng after the first game that if Middlesbrough didn't get everything their own way in the replay, they would start bleating and moaning about something or other.

What did surprise me though was the way everyone indulged them.

Am I mistaken or are the newspapers giving credibility to the opinions of the same Jonathan Woodgate who was nicknamed "Village" at Leeds for his intellectual prowess', the same Jonathan Woodgate whose own past is hardly whiter than white.

Why is his word taken as gospel all of a sudden? Did it ever cross anyone's mind that he actually has a vested interest in making people believe Ronaldo dived?

Maybe I'm looking at this through red-tinted spectacles but I've seen the incident again and again and it was a stonewall penalty.

Ronaldo bamboozled the defence, like he's done so often this season, and Woodgate made a clumsy challenge inside the box, it's as simple as that.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not naïve enough to think Ronaldo is a completely honest player. He does have a tendancy to tumble in the box at the slightest hint of contact.

But that's a part of his game that hasn't been quite so obvious this year. He's generally stayed on his feet a lot more often and his game's better for it.

For my money, he's the best player in the world at the moment - a true genius on the pitch - and our game would lose something if he was to pack up and head for Spain.

I've had my reservations about him in the past but he plays with a real love for football, that's obvious in everything he does, and I'm quite happy for him to continue lighting up the beautiful game.