I’d actually calmed down following yesterday afternoon’s events at the London Stadium before viewing Match of the Day 2 last night. For me, writing a match report is a remarkably cathartic process. All the rage flows out of my fingertips, through the keyboard and onto this website for Fulham fans – usually pretty fair-minded and educated followers of football to dissect. I’m used to Fulham being on the rough end of decisions and consoled myself during my journey across the capital afterwards that a weakened Whites’ side put on a performance that had plenty to commend it.

Being in the upper tier of the London Stadium is quite a novel football viewing experience. You feel more like a Subbuteo spectator rather than being invested in the action. Judgements on the ins and outs of a refereeing performance, or indeed how a particular player performed, are tough to make from such a vantage point. Had there been no VAR, you could have put this down to another dismal refereeing display. It is important for me to declare an interest beyond the obvious at this point. I’m as fanatical a Fulham fan as the rest of you, but from my teenage to university years (when my legs largely gave up the ghost), I was a referee. Maybe that’s why I set such high standards for England’s elite officials, but I also acknowledge that the men in the middle do an immensely difficult job.

Making allowances for the officials becomes difficult when they are quite as inept as Chris Kavanagh was yesterday. He has previous with Fulham of course – ignoring two blatant handballs as Ched Evans punched in an equaliser at Preston last season. There was no VAR in the Championship and you can forgive a good official the odd mistake. It will be dealt with the referee’s assessor and he will probably privately apologise to the team concerned. That doesn’t change the course of a result – but you accept a degree of human error when you rely on a referee having one view of a particular incident.

The introduction of the video assistant referee was meant to ensure that the obvious howlers were rectified before they impacted on vital games. This clearly isn’t happening. It didn’t serve us well the last time Fulham were in the Premier League (a referee refused Ivan Cavaleiro a penalty against Liverpool – he might well have missed it of course, the VAR ruled out a Fulham equaliser against Tottenham because of an accidental handball by Mario Lemina, the officials wrongly sent off Joachim Andersen at Newcastle and the Dane was particularly incensed by the fact that Eddie Nketiah’s equaliser at Arsenal, which doomed us to relegation was allowed to stand). Some of those incidents forced a change in the guidance, laughably in the case of Josh Maja’s goal, the day after it had been ruled out.

One of the big alterations in interpretation was supposed to be around the handball, which would allow leeway to the attacking side in the case of accidental handball. We have already been on the wrong end of this one at Arsenal this season. Yesterday’s decisive strike from Gianluca Scamacca might fall into this category, but it doesn’t appear to have been ruled out on those grounds, merely that Michael Salisbury does not see something so definitive as to overturn the decision to give the goal. The officials didn’t definitively award the goal on the field, neither the referee nor his assistant pointed to the centre circle or ran that way, and Scamacca’s own sheepish reaction was the clearest indication that something was amiss.

The commentators appeared all aghast that the goal was to be given. There is no doubt that Scamacca controls the ball with his right foot, at which point it begins to travel backwards, and then the revolutions on the ball are altered by a touch off his fingertips. That assists the Italian with his excellent lofted finish over Bernd Leno. I’ve never seen a situation like on MOTD2 last night, where all the pundits are united in their insistence that this goal should have been ruled out. It may have been a marginal handball, but it definitely had an impact on the striker’s ability to score what proved a crucial goal.

A sense of injustice was compounded in added time when Miguil Antonio uses his hands to help the ball beyond Joao Palhinha’s rather wild lunge and put himself in a position where he can run through on goal. The logic behind allowing the clinching goal to stand – because the act of Antonio scoring from a rebound – occurs in another phase of play is utterly defective. Had Leno just stood to one side and let him score are we really saying the goal would have been ruled out? Isn’t the VAR supposed to analyse an incident in the lead up to a goal, as they did when an Arsenal opener was disallowed at Old Trafford for a foul on Christian Eriksen?

The MOTD2 panel were even united in condemning Kavanagh’s decision to award a penalty against Andreas Pereira for his wrestling with Craig Dawson at a corner kick. I was fairly adamant watching the game from the stands that the Brazilian had been stupid to continue attempting to block off the centre half after the referee had delayed the taking of the corner to talk to the two protagonists about their physicality. Upon viewing the replay, you could argue that Dawson ran straight into Pereira and fell over. Most referees would feel justified in pointing to the spot in such a scenario, but when all the decisions go West Ham’s way it certainly leaves you feeling aggrieved. Fulham could easily have avoided such a turn of events by assigning a more suitable marker to one of the Hammers’ most dangerous goal threats from a set play – and that’s probably one for Marco Silva to adjust before next week’s game against Bournemouth.

The totality of yesterday afternoon’s key decisions – and how they undoubtedly tilted a game Fulham were in away from the Cottagers – does make you question the whole point of VAR and, by extension, the Premier League. The self-styled ‘best league in the world’ certainly doesn’t have the world’s best officials. It hasn’t for some time. The way the league has adopted VAR is farcical – as evidenced by how Marcus Rashford’s excellent individual goal was ruled out for handball last night. There is no consistency, something which frustrates players and fans alike.

Kavanagh, promoted to the Premier League’s select group of officials in 2017 and appointed to the FIFA list in 2019, has some questions to answer this morning. So does Salisbury. Players and managers are accountable for their mistakes via broadcast interviews. Referees have not been. Their scrutiny comes behind closed doors in a cosy environment organised by PGMOL. The officials are meant to be professionals. There should be some explanation, not in an official statement issued after the event, of why the decisions that prove so pivotal to a result, are taken. Especially if they are incorrect – or, at best, controversial.

I quickly got over yesterday’s disappointment, because I’ve lost two close Fulham-supporting friends in the past fortnight. They’ll no doubt be debating the unjustness of it all with Danny Fullbrook, Johnny Haynes, Tosh Chamberlain and others somewhere else right now. But, briefly, the anger at a ridiculous refereeing display matched when our old friend Mark Halsey robbed Chris Coleman’s Fulham of goals and penalties against an ‘invincible’ Arsenal. I feel like my match report from eighteen years ago still accurately articulates how bad that was. Halsey was kind enough to concede to me – many years later via social media – that it wasn’t his best day at the office. The difference, of course, is that if I failed in my office so badly, I’d face a sanction communicated by my boss to my colleagues and might even be dismissed. Chris Kavanagh will remain a Premier League and FIFA endorsed referee. And a failing VAR system will continue to frustrate fellow football fans. Little old Fulham will just have to get on with it.