Tony Pulis column: ‘VAR has to rein its neck in’ – how I’d change football for the fans

Referees are controlled and directed by governing bodies, so they should be held accountable for many of the above suspicions, but we need to move away from the situation we are in, where they have become so common.

We need to find a way to make referees invisible again because we currently have a system that turns refereeing into nothing more than empire building; This means you hear him talk more about VAR and referee decisions than about goals scored or conceded.

I actually feel sorry for the referees sometimes because most of this has nothing to do with them. What makes decisions much more complicated than they need to be are the changes in the law made in recent seasons.

For example, when Manchester City beat Liverpool on Sunday, the biggest talking point afterwards was Virgil van Dijk’s disallowed goal.

When offside was decided the old fashioned way, Andy Robertson was clearly offside because he was beyond City’s backline. There is no doubt about it.

However, the law now states that you can be deeper than the last defender and be ruled offside, such as influencing play, line of sight or interfering with the goalkeeper.

Everything is too subjective for each incident, which means the referee’s interpretation comes first.

The same thing happened with the handball law. I don’t think anyone really knows what handball is anymore; There are so many variations to each decision that it becomes almost impossible for the referees on the field or the VAR to make the right decision.

The fact that things have become overly complicated has taken away the fun of football, which I find ridiculous.

Let’s simplify things again so we can get our game back and start talking about goals again instead of referee decisions.

Tony Pulis was speaking to BBC Sport’s Chris Bevan.