ROBBIE Savage is a national footballing treasure.

Sadly, there are not enough players like him who can cause an argument in an empty room but never fail to give one hundred per cent commitment.

Savage is public enemy number one everywhere he goes apart from among Birmingham and Leicester whose fans, in the words of the former assistant manager Mark Bowen, "cherish him."

My brother cannot understand the hatred felt for Savage in Bolton and elsewhere. That's because he lives in Leicester, where Savage has worked, fought and charmed himself into cult status.

Savage was slaughtered for celebrating a penalty at Derby a couple of seasons back, for being involved in the red-carding of two Wanderers players inside 20 minutes last season and then for being scythed down and head-butted at Villa Park on Monday.

In the last two cases he was taken off, the explanation went, for his own safety.

Analyse it and you see Savage doesn't do much wrong except run his heart out, fly into tackles, wind up opponents and suck them into getting themselves sent off.

Savage is at fault for nothing. If he broke the rules of the game he would be punished and if the opponents weren't so stupid they wouldn't rise to his bait.

Dion Dublin admitted as much 24 hours after he fell prey to the Savage effect. The Villa striker head butted Savage but it was he who was left dazed and confused later as he apologised to the world for doing something he admitted he had no idea why.

I'll guarantee Savage's critics one thing. If he played for their team they would love him. Fans will forgive players anything as long as they wear their team's shirt with pride.

He is no different to John McGinlay at Bolton. The Beast of Burnden was hated by opposition fans and adored by his own more than any other player ever to wear the white shirt because he was prepared to kick, argue, fight, taunt and anything else necessary to win for Wanderers. He kissed the badge and meant it.

Paul Dickov, Roy Keane, Alan Shearer and Vinnie Jones fall into the same bracket of players who are loved by their own and booed by the rest wherever they go.

Like Savage, all of them are superhuman triers whose success in the game has been more attributable to what they have in their heads and their hearts than in their feet.

They used to call players like these characters and every team used to have them. I prefer to think of them as the few remaining hopes we have of keeping an increasingly dull game passionate.

Men like this have the rare gift of being able to create an atmosphere by their mere presence.

And in a game becoming infested by robot-type players with individuality coached out of them and clich vocabularly inserted in its place, you can give me Robbie Savage any time.