Of all the daft statements to have come out of Aston Villa – and I’m including Doug Ellis’s frequent claims that he invented the bicycle kick – it is hard to think of anything as absurd as suing a pundit for speaking the truth.

Jamie Carragher’s commonsense declaration that Villa manager Unai Emery might consider a move to Manchester United – as it is a bigger club – has apparently inflicted such a deep wound to the self-esteem of chairman Nassef Sawiris that he has initiated a legal complaint.

Sawiris’s short statement, which he published on social media on Friday night, consisted of 37 ill-chosen words. It started by accusing Carragher of “unacceptable insults to the club and its fans”, then concluded with the vainglorious declaration that “Aston Villa will not allow anyone to stop our ascension in English and European football.”

I know that football is a partisan business, where cultish and obsessive thinking comes as standard, but this is taking things to extremes. That last line feels as if it should be delivered in a Christopher Lee-style baritone, followed by peals of maniacal laughter.

Any rational Villa fan should feel embarrassed by the touchiness exhibited here. Apart from anything else, it is completely self-defeating. Most of us learned in school break-time that if you want to look like Mr Big, the last thing you should be doing is reacting to minor slights as if someone had set your hamster on fire.

But there is a serious point underneath the sniggering. Free speech is an essential part of British culture, just as the fascination of sport is enhanced by the forest of chatter that springs up around every goal, try or wicket.

There is even an argument that the Premier League relies especially heavily on post-match debate. If it is the most popular league in the world, that is partly because it has always been broadcast with impeccable production values and discussed by opinionated pundits.

As a result, fans across the world have come to understand the character of the individual clubs, which adds to their appeal even if – on a technical level – they may not actually be the best in show. La Liga has supplied almost twice as many Champions League winners since the turn of the century.

In this context, it is worrying to see the growing trend for football administrators to lash out at voices from the great punditry babel. A year ago, Alan Sugar took legal action after Jamie Redknapp suggested that he had left Spurs in a “mess” when he finished as chairman. Redknapp then ended up making a lengthy apology, plus a charitable donation of £10,000, for any “distress” caused to Sugar and his family.

Leaving aside the rights and wrongs of the original point, it feels wrong for claims about football to be held to the same standard as if Redknapp had been discussing – say – Sugar’s original corporate success story at Amstrad.

Sport is supposed to be a diversion, and while there are clearly financial machinations at work behind the players – as the Manchester City scandal reminds us – much of the fun relies on it being a safe space where we can ridicule our rivals, or even our own teams, with impunity.

By Saturday lunchtime, Carragher himself had followed Redknapp’s lead with an apology in which he said his language had been “clumsy & wrong”. So the precedents are beginning to pile up: self-important owners or chairmen can protect their micrometer-thin skins by issuing legal claims. The targets then understandably tend to cave, knowing they are up against opponents with deep pockets. It is all thoroughly tawdry and ruins the knockabout vibe of a good sporting argument.

Perhaps the Premier League should introduce a clause for administrators: if you want to be involved, you need to accept that you – and your club – are fair game for banter and brickbats like Carragher’s comments. These killjoys should be reminded that opinions make up the very lifeblood of our national football culture.