In recent years, football fans’ faith in English match officials has been slowly diminishing.

This process was accelerated in my opinion by the introduction of VAR, which not only dented referees’ self-belief but also ensured their mistakes were constantly revisited rather than quickly confined to the annals of football history.

However, just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse for this heavily scrutinised profession, up steps David Coote to stick another dagger into the back of public faith in the men in black.

The footage that emerged of Coote saying how much he hates Liverpool in general, and Jürgen Klopp in particular, throws into doubt the one thing that we all need to believe referees are: impartial.

Allowing himself to be filmed making those comments has had a massive knock-on effect. Not only has it almost certainly ended his own career as a match official, it has tarred every single one of his colleagues with the same brush.

Every referee has teams they dislike but I don’t believe many would let that influence their impartiality

Fans who have long suspected one ref or another has a grudge against their team now have the ‘proof’ of bias they need to make their arguments more compelling. Every time a decision goes against their team, they will think of Coote and his comments, and wonder if the current ref holds similar feelings about their own team. Simple errors and mistakes will now be hyped up into something altogether more sinister. Football’s conspiracy theorists now have more ammunition than they ever thought possible.

The authorities are going to have do some serious spinning to repair this particular collapse of confidence.

The irony of this whole situation is that I am pretty sure Coote isn’t alone in his feelings. No, I don’t mean every referee hates Liverpool, I mean you would be hard pressed to find a single match official who doesn’t dislike at least one particular team.

And I am not just talking about referees at the top of the sport either. Those who take charge of games at every level of the English pyramid are more than likely to have teams they just don’t like, either passionately or at least on a subliminal level. In fact, I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say this is a feeling that just about every match official on the planet has. They are only human, after all.

The difference is the vast, overwhelming, majority of those officials are fully aware that keeping those feelings to themselves is non-negotiable.

But here’s the kicker: despite my conviction that every single referee on the planet has teams they dislike – sometimes venomously – I also don’t believe that many of them would let that influence their impartiality.

Yes, it’s superbly convenient to blame the ref when things don’t go your way. We all do it. But I think you can bet your bottom dollar that 99 times out of a 100, if not 999 times out of a 1,000, a bad decision is down to nothing more than human error and not because of some deep-rooted resentment towards a club.

Coote has, by his actions, cast substantial doubt on crucial part of football’s very fabric. But, call me naive if you like, I personally still have total faith in their impartiality.

The men (or women) in the middle are mostly decent blokes (or lasses) who try their best under increasingly difficult circumstances and who would not let personal grievances get in the way of them being as fair and honest as possible. They may give some decisions through gritted teeth, but they always try to do what is right.

The question now is how do the football authorities get that message across? Or, more accurately, can they get that message across now that one man has brought the entire profession into disrepute?

I don’t like seeing anyone hung out to dry but the referee governing body will be looking to make a major example of Coote as they desperately try to show the football world he is the exception, not the rule.

Expensive tickets to pay expensive managers?

I don’t think you need me to remind you that I am not a big fan of international breaks. It’s a topic that may have come up in conversation before...

Well, last week my distaste grew when I heard a father talking on radio about how he wanted to take his young son to Wembley to watch England play Ireland this evening but the cheapest tickets he could find for the pair of them were £240.

And that despite the fact the squad has been decimated by injury: a whole bunch of first-teamers were ruled out of selection before the squad was announced, and then, after it was picked, another nine pulled out.

So, today’s match is going to be Harry Kane and England Reserves vs Ireland.

Going back to that dad on the radio, if you chuck in travel and transport, a bite to eat, a few drinks, a match day programme, maybe a scarf and a hat, and you are probably looking at around £400 for him to spend 90 minutes of ‘quality time’ with his son.

That is monstrous.

I’ve said before that international football needs a complete rethink. Well, the first thing they need to think about, if they want these games to remain significant to the bread-and-butter fan, is the price.

Meanwhile, England’s comfortable and commanding 3-0 win over Greece on Thursday, which came despite the aforementioned withdrawals, may have left the Football Association wondering if they weren’t a little hasty with their rushed appointment of Thomas Tuchel.

You can dress it up any way you like but no one will convince me that they hadn’t secretly been planning to give Lee Carsley the job all along. The very moment Gareth Southgate handed in his resignation, the FA bigwigs would have collectively turned their heads in Carsley’s direction with a money-saving grin on their faces.

It was only when the former Under-21 manager made a complete dog’s breakfast of the home match against Greece, trying to be too clever by not playing a striker, that they went into panic mode and dusted off their copy of the book ‘Expensive Foreign Managers Who Will Make It Look Like You Thought About Your Appointment Properly’.

I would much rather have stuck with Carsley and see what happens. If it had gone horribly wrong, at least it would have been a good old-fashioned English disaster. (Well, English with a dash of Irish).

As it stands now, even if Tuchel wins every game during his 18 months in charge, it will still not feel like a full English success. And that country-specific pride is all international football really has left.

E-mail: James.calvert@timesofmalta.com

X: @maltablade