Premier League has benefits for Leeds United but as VAR denied Patrick Bamford, they were well hidden - Daniel Chapman

Leeds United are out of the pages of the glossy brochure and into the Premier League’s small print now.

The only answer to our call to the downtrodden operators of the EPL Consumer Careline is that the old catalogue has been superseded now, yes, that one, the one that said this would be fun all the time. They could send a copy of the updated edition, but they’ve only printed six.

They can let us have a peek for £14.95.

We lost to Leicester City in League One and Crystal Palace in the Championship so, like we’ve dragged a speedboat back from the Bullseye studio to our landlocked home, it’s hard to see what we’ve gained now we’re losing to them in the Premier League.

Gabby Agbonlahor’s opinions were not advertised in the promotional literature, but we’ve got them, and Eric Idle’s, but at least he’s on our side. Where, though, were Monty Python when referees were robbing Leeds United in the 1970s? Leaving it all to Leonard Rossiter’s Rigsby on Rising Damp, that’s where.

An excess of media attention was something we must confess to craving.

The nearest recent seasons have brought us to Billy Bremner showing up with a parrot on Les Dawson’s show was those two Italian comedians in fur coats running after Gjanni Alioski. It’s nice we’re being noticed again.

As for the rest of it, I suppose we were warned, only everyone always assumes VAR only happens to other people, don’t they, until it happens to them? You never think of that sort of thing happening in a nice, quiet area like this. That Michael Dean was always such a helpful neighbour, the keeps-himself-to-himself type.

But you never can tell with some people, can you?

The offside travesty at Selhurst Park – I can’t call it a ‘decision’ – changed the game, changed the result, changed the mood. Now I’m glad internet streaming ruined Blockbuster Video’s business, and will be holding a Betamax bonfire on Holbeck Moor, date to be arranged.

I sincerely but desperately hope the attention on Bamford’s disallowed goal becomes some sort of watershed for VAR’s use.

We were promised technology would reduce human errors, and the in-or-out goal decision system has been very successful, apart from that one time it kept Aston Villa in the Premier League on its own.

Statistical analysis also reckons decision making has improved with VAR’s help, and more correct calls are being made. But that’s only part of the story. Because the unintended consequence has been to give referees like Mike Dean an entirely new way to exert mean, capricious influence over a game that is supposed to be fun.

The red and blue lines judging offsides on the screens at Stockley Park look like an impulse-bought add-on to a system that wasn’t capturing referees’ attention until the salesperson punched a few keys and drew a few diagrams, wondering how they could have neglected this whole new way of spoiling matches.

Offside was never something to be judged to the millimetre, just as handball was never meant to be discerned by the fingernail.

VAR and, to be fair to it, the years of freeze-frame argument leading up to its use, has perverted the rules of association football, turning instructions for playing the game into punishing regulations that make play criminal.

The handball rule exists so that soccer is not rugby. Use your feet.

The offside rule exists so strikers can’t stand in the six-yard box.

Midfielders, invent ways of putting them there with the ball.

They are both constraints designed to generate ways of playing, not edicts demonising creativity.

There are few better examples of the beauty the offside rule can be responsible for than the timing of Bamford’s run and Klich’s pass, the players posing like diagrams from a coaching manual.

Even Pat’s point was perfect, the little bit of reality proving the goal wasn’t telepathic but made from person-to-person communication on the pitch at Selhurst Park.

But it was the point that took Bamford’s upper arm beyond the point of no return, answered by Mike Dean’s message from the ether, delivered by the Premier League’s jarring, jaunty big screen graphics.

Robbie Savage has already outhyped me by calling it the worst decision in the history of football, but it’s left for me to say it’s the most glaring example of how far the Premier League has gone from simple principles of beauty and fun.

If that goal had been scored in a park it would have stood, and that’s the game I want. The Premier League has many benefits, although it hid them well last week.

But it needs to remember what is window dressing, and what is football.

And to realise that fiasco – not a decision – was neither.