I’M convinced referees don’t know what a yellow or red card is any more.

The numbers don’t make good reading. There have been 270 cautions and 10 players sent off in 70 Premier League games this season – an absolutely incredible amount – and, for me, there is only one reason.

The evaluation system referees are currently subjected to just does not work.

They don’t like it, and I know some of them refuse to even acknowledge it, and yet it is taking away the empathy in top level football and the officials’ ability to properly manage a game.

For those of you who don’t know what I mean, let me explain how it works.

Assessors will sit down and watch a DVD of every second of every game and make notes. If, for example, someone gives a penalty in the 76th minute, they will decide whether it is correct or incorrect, in their view.

If they feel it is incorrect a referee will be down-marked.

On a Thursday a meeting is called and each decision is put to a vote. If you end up with four assessors deciding it shouldn’t have been a penalty, while three of them think it was, you lose overall marks.

That then goes towards the merit system. At the end of each year, a referee’s bonus is decided on where they finish in that league table – so what you get is a group of nervous referees that are over-compensating to make sure they don’t end up at the bottom.

Last season there was a meeting called at St George’s that showed something like 29 red cards had been missed, according to the assessors, so far that season.

I remember thinking at the time ‘here comes a spate of red cards’ and so it proved.

We seem to have completely lost track of what kind of offence deserves a yellow card and which ones don’t.

I watched Kevin Friend take charge of the Everton and Manchester United game the other day and he got all the big decisions correct. No complaints.

There was an early reckless challenge on Robin van Persie, which got a yellow, but then Daley Blind did something exactly the same and got away with it.

A few minutes later he goes into a nothing challenge with Stephen Naismith and gets a caution for it. I think that was over-compensating with all those assessors in mind.

The problem is not that referees are being evaluated but that they don’t tell you how to put a wrong decision right.

The system is disliked by the people who are doing it and needs to be addressed because referees are losing their feeling for the game.