Another week, another wave of righteous anger over the persistent and embarrassing failings of VAR.

The complaints are nothing new – goals stupidly ruled out, penalty decisions going wrong, marginal and pointless offside calls. I’m not going to bother going into all the latest incidents individually as you know the score only too well.

But, in case you missed them, I will bring to your attention comments made by Glenn Hoddle after the particularly horrendous offside call in Tottenham Hotspur game against Sporting Lisbon. Why? Because what he said should send chills down the spine of everyone who loves football.

“I’ve thought about this for a long time. People in the stadium, they’re not going to come to the stadium anymore,” he said.

And he’s right. VAR is turning people off football. Fans will put up with a lot of things being taken away – standing areas, beer, tight shorts, old fashioned stadia, sideburns, smoking – but when you take away the most fundamental thing of all, the end is nigh.

And that most fundamental thing? Celebrating a goal.

As Hoddle said: “As a player, you want to celebrate a goal, and as fans you want to celebrate a goal. Nowadays there are going to be goals going in and players we will be going, we can’t celebrate here. Till we wait. It’s taking everything we like about football away from the game.”

Never has a truer word been said.

From the day you first fall in love with football to, I imagine, the day you move on the big pitch in the sky, there is nothing more emotional, special and thrilling than a goal. Whether it is a curling one into the top corner of your back garden goal, right between the orange tree and the drainpipe or watching the team you love bury one in the back of the net in a proper match, it is the pinnacle of football. It’s what it’s all about.

But at the highest level, that thrill, joy and excitement is being stamped out of the game. And that could well – as Hoddle says – be the beginning of the end. Why spend a large chunk of your wages going to watch a game if the most basic of pleasures has been taken away?

Ah, but VAR will sort itself out, the pro-camp insists.

Well, the fact that these mistakes, misjudgements and pathetic tight calls are still being made years after the system was introduced suggests it isn’t going to sort itself out.

This was meant to make football better. It was meant to eliminate controversy and errors. It has almost entirely failed to do any of that in quite comprehensive fashion. Instead, we are lumped with a new, pathetic, version of football that has lost the very essence of its being.

It hurts to see the (formerly) beautiful game ridiculed and demeaned in this way, all for the sake of a desperation to involve technology.

Time to put this failed experiment out of its misery. Because if we don’t, the misery will come in the form of increasingly empty football grounds.

Time to put this failed experiment out of its misery. Because if we don’t, the misery will come in the form of increasingly empty football grounds

Gerrard wasn’t ready for the Premiership

A few weeks ago I tried to lay to rest the misguided theory that you need big game experience to manage a big team, using Graham Potter’s success at Chelsea as my test case.

So far so good on that front.

Building on that, can we start to lay to rest another (admittedly less common) misconception please? – that being successful in Scotland at one of the big two clubs makes you ready for a Premier League appointment.

Steven Gerrard did an excellent job at Rangers in his three years in charge, eventually guiding them to the title. I’m not disputing that, especially considering Celtic’s previous dominance. But if Stevie G was a hit north of the border, he was a miss down south, getting fired by Aston Villa last week after less than a year in charge.

The writing had been on the wall for the former Liverpool captain for a while, as it was becoming increasingly obvious the players were not playing for him. And, as the defeats mounted, he followed up losing the dressing room by losing the fans, who were actively chanting for his dismissal during his last few games. And dismissed he was, after the abject 3-0 defeat to Fulham.

In their first game after his departure, Villa scored as many goals (three) in the first 15 minutes as they had in Gerrard’s previous six games.

That says it all.

The harsh reality is that managing Celtic or Rangers in the Scottish league does not prepare you for life in the English top-flight, no matter how successful you may be.

I mean absolutely no disrespect here, I am not belittling Scottish football in the slightest. But the fact that only two teams have a realistic chance of winning the title means that as manager of one of those teams, you are only really competing against the other.

In fact, if I were a Premier League chairman looking to make a managerial appointment, I would cast my eyes over the teams that have just been promoted from League Two, League One and the Championship. All three of those leagues are considerably tougher in terms of competition than the Scottish Premiership. To be perfectly clear, I am not suggesting they are of a higher standard; just that the competitivity is far, far more intense.

What now for Stevie G then?

Well, he will be back in the managerial saddle at some point. That is certain. But I suspect he may need a spell in the Championship to get more of a feel for a league where the playing field is leveller and you are tested to the max, week-in, week-out.

That will be the making (or indeed breaking) of him as a manager.

E-mail: james@quizando.com

Twitter: @maltablade