Early on Sunday afternoon, the former Premier League referee Bobby Madley took to Twitter and underlined the absurdity of all that had gone before.



He pulled two still images from previous Match of the Day episodes, during those segments where pundits micro-analyse referees’ decisions. He showed two pictures, in which the broadcasters attached something akin to a laser beam to the referees’ eyes, underlining the official’s view of the incident and then zooming in on the scene to magnify the outrage.



Madley wrote: “Media saying VAR offside lines are not accurate enough to make decisions … I remember when they thought x-ray vision was an accurate enough way to question how a ref could possibly make a wrong decision though. It does make me laugh.”



In doing so, Madley acted as a reminder of dissections that, in their worst moments, bordered on witch-hunts. If there is one saving grace to be had in VAR, it is that the current...