sport news All Howard Webb's shiny TV show does is pander to the mob and fuel the ... trends now

Howard Webb wants to help but the truth is he is not helping. 

The head of the refereeing body wants to introduce openness and transparency and dialogue into the relationship between match officials, football clubs and the public. 

His motives are honourable but standing in front of television cameras and talking about mistakes made by those he is paid to represent is the wrong move driven by the best intentions.

It's pandering to the mob, to the unreasonable, to the delusional, to the never-satisfied, to the self-serving. It is not serving referees and it is not serving the game. 

It's a waste of time. In fact, it's making matters worse and if we are ever going to escape from this tedious and painful cycle of mistake-complaint-explanation-complaint then it has to stop.

Earlier this week Webb spoke on TV about the recent game between Everton and Nottingham Forest. 

This was the game that included three contentious decisions that so enraged Forest and their owner Evangelos Marinakis that the club publicly accused VAR official Stuart Attwell, a Luton Town supporter, of being biased. It remains a most disgraceful slur.

The upshot of Webb's appearance was that it is now accepted that one of the penalties denied Forest on the day should have been given. So there we are. 

We know now what we knew all along, namely that mistakes were made on the day. 

And this takes us where exactly? No closer to a land of sporting utopia of happiness, acceptance and contentment that's for sure.

Will Forest feel better about this? It's unlikely. They won't be getting any of three lost points back.

Their supporters? I imagine they will continue to feel the world is against them.

What about Attwell and match referee Anthony Taylor? It's hard to imagine there is much joy to be confined there either. 

Congratulations, lads. You didn't totally cock that game up but we've just shown the world exactly how dumb you were not to notice that Ashley Young had felled Callum Hudson-Odoi like a bull charging a sapling.

And what about the rest of us? Are we any happier after all this endless schemozzle? 

Do we like football any more than we did last week? Do we have any greater or lesser faith in our officials than before the cameras rolled? 

Or do we just continue to understand the basic concepts of sport and indeed life? That being that mistakes are made – some in our favour and some not – and that the true test of all of us is how we deal with them.

Here lies the truth of this. Namely that acknowledging and examining refereeing mistakes in public takes us absolutely nowhere. 

It merely empowers those unfortunates who will always and without question feel that the world is against them or – in these circumstances – their football team.

Indeed the further down the line we go in this mad pursuit of perfection, transparency and accountability, the angrier and more convulsed by a perception of bias, injustice and dark forces the idiots will get. 

And the real victims - the ones whose jobs and lives and continue to grow harder and more uncomfortable with each bending of the knee to the crowd – are the very people who are supposed to have all the power in the first place – the referees.