Right. Where do I even start with this one.

Sonia Bompastor has come out absolutely swinging at the officials after Chelsea's Women's Champions League quarterfinal against Arsenal. And fair play to her. There was a hair pull. An actual hair pull. On the pitch. In a Champions League match. And apparently nobody with a whistle or a screen or a headset thought it was worth having a look at.

In my day, if someone pulled your hair you sorted it out yourself in the tunnel afterwards. But we're not in my day any more, are we. We're in the age of forty seven camera angles and a bloke sat in a room in Stockley Park eating a Twix and still somehow missing the obvious.

Don't get me started on VAR. Actually, do get me started. What is the point of it? Genuinely. What is the actual point? We were told it would catch the things referees miss. A player grabs another player by the hair. That's not subtle. That's not a borderline offside where someone's armpit is three millimetres ahead of a defender's kneecap. That's a person grabbing another person's hair. My nan could have spotted it and she's been dead since 2014.

Bompastor is right to be furious. I managed in the Conference South for six years and I saw better officiating from a lad called Derek who did Tuesday night fixtures and worked at Halfords during the day. Derek had one functioning eye and a dodgy hip and he still would have spotted a hair pull.

That's the problem with modern football. The technology is there but the people operating it are asleep at the wheel. We've spent millions on replay systems and goal line technology and earpieces and what have we got? A sport where someone can yank another player's ponytail in a European quarterfinal and the ref just waves play on like nothing happened.

Now. Here's where it gets properly mad. This is Chelsea we're talking about. The same Chelsea who just announced pre tax losses of £262.4 million. Quarter of a billion pounds. Gone. Up in smoke. And on the same day it came out they've spent more on agents' fees than any other club in the country.

So let me get this straight. Chelsea are haemorrhaging money at a rate that would make a Premier League accountant physically sick. Their women's team is in a Champions League quarterfinal getting done over by officials who apparently can't see what's happening right in front of them. And somewhere in all of this, an agent is buying a third yacht.

Lovely. Just lovely.

I feel for Bompastor. I really do. She's trying to win a European trophy while the club behind her is on financial fire and the referees in front of her are pretending hair pulling doesn't exist. That's a tough gig. I once had to manage a League Two side where the chairman sold our best striker to fund a conservatory extension. I know what it feels like when the people above you have lost the plot.

But this is the state of the game now. The women's game has grown brilliantly. Packed stadiums. Proper quality on the pitch. Television deals. Sponsorships. And yet the officiating hasn't kept up. It's the same old story. The product improves and the infrastructure stays stuck in 1987.

In my day, you didn't need VAR because the ref was ten yards away and actually paying attention. Now we've got a ref ten yards away AND a replay room AND a hundred cameras and somehow it's worse.

Bompastor deserves better. The players deserve better. The fans deserve better.

Chelsea's accountants, on the other hand, deserve whatever is coming to them.