After a poor display from Martin Atkinson in Arsenal’s win over Sunderland, our resident laws-of-the-game expert, got a little bit worked up…

Another Arsenal game and another horrible decision.

You cannot believe how poor the Premier League Standard is compared to officials around Europe. At least, it is consistent. It’s got that going for it.

Obviously, the Sanchez penalty incident will be brushed over because Arsenal got the three points. But it still does not make it right, at all.

Things like that should not be allowed to happen.

Referees are there to apply the Laws of the Game fairly and consistently, not to influence the match result, and all too often they impact that very thing with ramifications beyond the 90 minutes of which they are in charge.

I really don’t understand the FA and PGOML’s stance as they don’t want to review referees’ mistakes, and it’s hard to see how anything can improve unless mistakes are acknowledged and responsibility taken.

I really believe teams should be able to appeal unfair/biased refereeing provided that they can produce clear facts.

I mean, it is not hard to produce them, every team has a video analyst in the stand. All they need to do is produce a file and, after the match, put it all on a USB key and give it to  the match assessor.

If the referee is guilty of biased (or incompetent) refereeing after the video assessment and a team won or drew because of it, the match can be replayed. This is quite simple to put into place.

And of course, all that stuff wouldn’t even be needed if Video Assistant Referees were introduced across the board. If would only need to be a temporary mesure, put in place for a couple of seasons while football rags itself into the 21st century.

It is also quite strange that the Premier League has not put itself forward for video testing considering how bad the refereeing level is and the number of mistakes made per game. Perhaps that’s why they haven’t.

If the Premier League wants to insiste that it is the best League in the world, it will never be accepted as such until the quality of refereeing improves.