Concur with all of that. It's maddening as hell when you're on the receiving end, but it's the sort of shithousery that, when done well and for your team, is magnificent to watch. I will happily tell anyone who'll listen that the best teams need an utter shithouse in the middle of the park. Busquets, Ramos, Mascherano, Roberto Carlos (not in the middle, obvs) are among the obvious Grade A examples.
What we've seen with Ferguson is that Saints very much felt he was 'getting away with it' on Saturday, and were rightly angry, until precisely the point at which he was no longer getting away with it, at which point Dons fans were annoyed at him for failing to manage his own game effectively.
The sub-plot, of course, is the media claiming he was somehow hard done by, which I think it's reasonable to say, on balance, he wasn't. The sub-sub plot is that, in Scotland, the game has been dominated by one team for a decade or so now, at the heart of which has been one of the biggest shithouses we've seen for a long time, who regularly gets away with stuff that most players teams would get done for. But still: I tend to hate the system/officiating, not the individuals, who do it because they can.