James Lawton: FA establishes tough new era by bringing rich clubs to book

At the time some of us would not have regarded keel-hauling half the Arsenal team at the nearby Manchester Ship Canal as excessive punishment for their behaviour when they singled out Ruud Van Nistelrooy for the shoving, foaming-mouthed treatment.

But then by the time the Football Association's disciplinary committee came to hand out their sentences yesterday there were some substantial reasons not to be too outraged by the fact that Martin Keown, who played such an instigating role in the revolting scenes at Old Trafford, has been fined a mere £20,000 - or less than half a week's wages - on top of his three-match ban.

None of the sentences (including Lauren's four-game suspension, one each for Patrick Vieira and Ray Parlour, and most especially Ashley Cole's piffling fine of £10,000 fine which came along with an escape from a ban) could be described even vaguely as draconian, but reaction surely had to be softened by the fact that the FA had in fact achieved something of significance.

They had torn away the arrogance inherent in Arsenal's first response to charges that they had conducted themselves so grossly.

Arsène Wenger's dismissal of the sickening impact of the sight of his players milling around a single United player with such unsightly venom was, when you look back, the source of much of the fuel for a neutral's rage that day. Wenger offered no repentance on behalf of his team and it was legitimate then to wonder where his brutal intransigence would leave the reputation of a club which once stood for all the best values in English football.

Such concern has been softened considerably by the reaction of the club to the FA's swift decision to bring charges against them, and yesterday it was surely significant that Arsenal felt obliged to issue another full apology for their team's misconduct at Old Trafford.

Though the fine of £175,000 levied on the club was no more than a flea bite when set against the operating finances of Premiership football, here again there was a mitigating circumstance. The Arsenal board had swiftly cut the ground from beneath their manager's feet when they announced that they would not fight the FA charges.

Yesterday's apologies - they added up, satisfactorily, to a grovel - have surely applied huge pressure on Wenger finally to tighten up his approach to discipline. Though the former Arsenal player Paul Davis was last night telling a national radio audience that the punishment was harsh, official responses by the club have been much more compliant, which was surely an augury of a greater attempt to clean up on-field behaviour.

What I hope it means is that the first leg of the drive by the FA's chief executive, Mark Palios, for a desperately needed improvement in the game's image remains on course. There is much difficult ground to cover, no doubt, and obviously most trickily in the case most concerning Arsenal's fierce rivals Manchester United, the failure/refusal of Rio Ferdinand to take a drug test. But if Palios's first vital objective was to implant a new sense of responsibility in the most powerful clubs, he can reasonably already claim a degree of success.

His tough line on Arsenal's conduct at Old Trafford and on Ferdinand's failure of professional responsibilities, may not, at least thus far, have produce eye-watering examples of iron justice, but a tone has certainly been set. This reality was set in some relief by the feeble response of Uefa, the European game's governing body, to the tunnel incidents during the recent England-Turkey internationals. Fines of £13,500 for the Turkish FA, and £4,400 for the FA, could provoke only ridicule. What they did, more than anything, though, was recall the bad old times when the FA, almost as a matter of course, refused to face up to their disciplinary responsibilities.

Palios's stand may still be in the formative stage but the fact that it has progressed as far as it has in a climate where it was widely believed that the government of the national game was beginning to amount to no more than the rubber stamping of the will of the Premiership money men is a matter for some celebration. Modest jubilation, perhaps, but then even in the heat of Old Trafford the keel-hauling solution was never going to carry too much support.

What we heard yesterday was maybe not a whiplash, but nor was it a whimper. It produced another apology from Arsenal, another acknowledgement that what some of their players did at Old Trafford demanded nothing less than the weight and contempt of the football law. Accountability was in the air and for that there was reason to be grateful.