Over the last couple of years, football referees have become subject to scrutiny due to the number of shocking decisions they have been making on the pitch.

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Many high-profile comments are being expressed, more often by frustrated managers following glaring errors in judgement made by the men with the whistle.

No-one likes to speak ill of the referee because their job is hard enough as it is without the pressures of criticism. But the frequency with which these schoolboy errors are being made is getting out of hand.

A comment by Manchester United’s Sir Alex Ferguson after the Chelsea game on Sunday highlighted the way I have felt about referees for some time now.

What really killed my faith was the World Cup in 2006. There were more highlights in the officials’ gaffe column than there were on the playing field.

At that moment I turned away from the sport in disgust, an appetite spoilt by a poor assistant chef. But the artistry of players such as Thierry Henry, Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo and Andrei Arshavin, to mention but  a few, makes you want to believe. That it can all be stolen by a horror decision is sickening.

In an age where defeat means a lot more for a wider range of people than before, you would think the officials would get it correct more often than not.

The argument for technology, or at best more assistants, is there for all to see. But FIFA, in its arrogant wisdom, continues to make a laughing stock of the beautiful game.

And then there is a holy grail they call technology that football’s governing body seems to treat like swine flu.

They don’t want to know, and some even put forth the misguided assertion that these contentious decisions make for good drama. But drama is life with the boring bits cut out, and of late we have been having more drama than life.

We spend so much time talking about the mistakes being made by refs that we have forgotten about the game altogether.

It's like a new phenomenon in entertainment where the man behind the scenes is becoming a bigger factor than the actor. It’s the case of the lighting assistant becoming the star of the show.

Players and managers only losing faith in the referees now? Mine was lost a while back!