Referees are controlled and guided by governing bodies, so they must be held accountable for many of the doubts mentioned above, but we need to move away from the situation we find ourselves in, where they have become all too common.
We need to find a way to make referees invisible again because, at the moment, we have a system that has turned refereeing into nothing less than empire building, meaning that you often hear more people talking about VAR and refereeing decisions than about goals scored or conceded.
In fact, sometimes I feel sorry for the referees, because a lot of this has nothing to do with them. It is the amendments to the laws in recent seasons that have made decisions much more complicated than they should be.
For example, when Manchester City beat Liverpool on Sunday, the big topic of conversation afterwards was Virgil van Dijk’s disallowed goal.
With the old school way offside was decided, Andy Robertson was definitely offside because he was beyond the City backline. There is no doubt about that.
But the way the law is written now, with references to affecting play, line of sight or interfering with the goalkeeper, you can go deeper than the last defender and be declared offside.
It’s all too subjective for each individual incident, so the referee’s interpretation takes center stage.
The same has happened with the handball law. I don’t think anyone really knows what handball is: there are so many variations in each decision that it makes it almost impossible for the referees on the field or the VAR to get it right.
Overcomplicating things has taken the joy out of football, which I find ridiculous.
Let’s simplify things again, so we can get our game back and start talking about goals again, not referee decisions.
Tony Pulis was speaking to BBC Sport’s Chris Bevan.
