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Football is facing an existential crisis.

If left unchecked it risks becoming a runaway issue that will ultimately drive long-standing fans from the game to be replaced by tourist supporters.

Maybe, just maybe, that’s what the Premier League overlords want. I’d like to think not but evidence we see week after week suggest they’re not bothered either way.

For those of you who believe that all is well with the English game, read no further.

If you think our referees have nothing to do with the constant conspiracy theories surrounding them and the intervention of VAR, look away now.

For those of you starting to have a hankering for the days when a goal was a goal or when a foul wasn’t always a yellow card, join the club.

My almost weekly rants against PGMOL and its “elite” referees seem to upset a small group of Brentford fans who believe all isn’t rotten in the state of Denmark… and TW8.

But it is – and I make no apology for calling out the complete lack of consistency and irrational decisions that are a plague on the modern game.

Wrestling at corners, blatantly delaying penalties and brick shithouse centre backs hurling themselves to the floor at the slightest touch are all making a mockery of it.

This performative theatre has no place in this or any sport.

But referees either too scared to do the right thing or lacking direction from the game’s regulators stand and watch as those same giant defenders pull off moves that an MMA wrestler would be proud of.

All the above would stop in an instant – and the VAR mayhem of the Arsenal-West Ham game avoided – if a consistent zero tolerance approach was adopted.

Sadly, consistency is not a word that features high in match officials’ dictionaries.

I hear the apologists who think referees are “doing their best” – but if what we’ve endured this season is their best, it isn’t anywhere near good enough. Just my opinion.

Take the travesty at the Etihad. Yet another ‘rabbit in the headlights ref’ brushing away two strong penalty shouts at pivotal points in the game. Fine margins and VAR not doing as advertised.

One probably not, the other a definite pen and red card at most other grounds in the league.

“Not enough contact” the verdict of the Stockley Park mob who clearly have only a limited grasp of the physical element of the game and the science of a rapid striker getting even the slightest touch.

It’s this and the fact that the average football fan now has no idea about the criteria the VAR team use to reach or overrule decisions that leave many of us bemused.

Like many I suspect, I’d always thought violent conduct was a straight red. I was unaware of the clause that insists that doesn’t apply for players like Silva who always seem to have a ‘get out of jail free’ card.

The irony here is that had Collins ‘done a Cucurella’, hit the deck and rolled around a bit we’d have had slightly more of a chance of getting the decision that gets given 90% of other times – and almost certainly would have been if it was a Brentford player.

These players – watch how many times Cole Palmer drops to the ground and falls on the ball to get free kicks – get away with it for one indisputable reason.

A referee who gives a controversial decision against #teamslikebrentford gets less stick and headlines than if he puts his neck on the line to give a decision against a title-chasing side.

This unconscious bias is human nature but in the best league in the world with some of the most technically gifted footballers, it shouldn’t be.

Elite players should have elite refs and elite VAR personnel who get involved only for clear and obvious errors. But above all they should be consistent, because that’s all every fan wants.

And when professionals like Shearer, Henry and Co are condemning it, there must be something wrong.

City were deserved winners – no complaints there – but it wasn’t a level playing field and when you’re up against it against one of the best sides in the world you need a level playing field.

Football-wise, the bravery Brentford are starting to show against some of the best sides in the world is incredible. At times they had City rocking.

The least we should expect is impartiality, and far too often this season we haven’t had it. Unless the Premier League cracks down hard on the antics and inconsistency blighting the game, it will only get worse.

I’d love a reset next season, but maybe that’s expecting too much and the game will career inexorably towards even more chaos. If that happens, it will mark the beginning of the end of the game we love.

Jim Levack