JOSE Mourinho controversially hogged the cameras to give his side of the story on Sunday – if only Martin Atkinson could be given the same licence.

I’ve every sympathy for Mourinho because his team were very hard done by at Stamford Bridge. I won’t go into detail on every decision because I don’t think there are enough pages in the newspaper.

I agreed completely with what he said, even though I wonder what BT Sport would have thought of him sitting on the Goals on Sunday couch as he is meant to be an ambassador for them.

But rather than be defended by ridiculous FA statements backing his every decision when the whole world can see it should have been otherwise, shouldn’t Martin get a chance to come out and give his side of the story?

I’ve been there. About two years ago I didn’t see a challenge from Wigan’s Callum McManaman on Newcastle United’s Massaido Haidara

I went in Monday morning, said a player had run in front of me and I should have issued a red card for serious foul play. The next thing I knew a statement had been issued to say my assistant had been looking in that vicinity from 60-70 yards away.

I offered my apologies and ended up getting a suspension for six weeks.

It wasn’t the only time that happened. In 2011 I missed an elbow off the ball from West Brom’s Gabriel Tamas on Norwich City’s James Vaughan.

Roy Hodgson phoned me up to speak the next morning, I hold my hands up and then, you guessed it, I’m suspended.

I know Martin and I know he’ll be hurting, so why not give him that chance to apologise or to clarify what he was thinking? It prevents this witch-hunt that seems to have gone on for days now.

You have PGMOL employees like Dermott Gallagher coming out to speak to the media but they do little more than tow the line.

And where was the PGMOL’s Howard Webb in all this? On a FIFA instructors course in Portugal.

I’m sure he isn’t happy with what is happening and rather than being holed up in a TV studio at weekends, he would prefer to be out there looking at the referees and trying to help.

The system itself is fundamentally flawed and badly managed.

I don’t want to offer excuses for Martin but perhaps you should look at why he was in action at all on Saturday and not given an extra 24 hours to recover from a midweek game between Schalke and Real Madrid, which didn’t see him return home until late on Thursday?

Roberto Martinez can moan that his players are tired but when it comes to referees they have to suffer in silence. That seems to be a recurring theme.

. . . . . .

WHEN you are refereeing on a bog of a pitch with the rain driving down and the wind whistling round your ears, you have to make a few allowances.

Kevin Friend tried to do that in the Southampton v Liverpool game on Sunday and ended up trending on Twitter for his troubles.

He got hung, drawn and quartered for his first-half performance but why should that be the case when he’s simply trying to manage the game?

People would be just as quick to jump on his back if he blew up for every challenge on a slippy pitch and looked like he was being over-officious.

I applaud him doing things his own way.

I never took much notice of the Premier League assessors and tried not to let the fact you might have a stickler in the stands marking you down affect me.

The merit system the referees are currently being judged on makes things even worse, it is making people paranoid each and every week and we are missing key match decisions as a result.

It’s time we let a bit of common sense rule. Take Jan Vertonghen’s push on Mark Noble in the Tottenham v West Ham game.

It was no different at all from Nemanja Matic’s shove on Ashley Barnes – and a lot less warranted in my view.

Matic got a red card from Martin Atkinson but Vertonghen gets nothing from Jon Moss, who had a good view of it.

People shout me down about this but I think a push anywhere about the chest height is a caution, nothing more. If he clocks him one, fine, send him off, but this is handbags we are talking about.

Howard Webb got it right when he went on Monday Night Football, even though he got torn apart by Gary Neville. Not every movement of the head is a headbutt and a red card, nor is every push.

Matic was retaliating for an overly-aggressive challenge which should have been spotted and acted upon. He isn’t the kind of player to react like that and I don’t think he should have been sent off.

. . . . . .

I WAS as happy as Larry when they took me off the line and put me in the middle as a Premier League referee.

It meant I didn’t have to get my head round the offside rule quite so much – and it’s still a case of confused.com even now.

How on earth can the PGMOL legitimise West Ham’s second goal when Enner Valencia is clearly in an offside position from Mark Noble’s cross.

It doesn’t matter that he missed it and Diafra Sakho scored at the far post; the law states that if he makes a movement towards the ball, then it is offside. You’d think that was simple, evidently not.

When I was a linesman – as they used to be called – I was all over the place. A jumbo jet would fly over and I’d be wondering where it was going to.

Then you’d realise you were in the middle of a game, and I can only think the same thing is happening nowadays judging by the number of strange decisions.

Ander Herrera’s goal for Manchester United at Preston the other weekend was exactly the same – Wayne Rooney was in the line of the goalkeeper. It’s offside.

People seem to be getting excited about video technology coming into the game now that it has become public knowledge it will be discussed by FIFA at a delegate’s meeting in Belfast on Saturday.

I don’t think people should hold their breath. We haven’t even come to the end of the trial by the Dutch FA yet, and it will need a lot more examining before we see it ironing out offsides once and for all.

I’ve said for ages that anything we can bring in to help referees and their assistants would be a good thing for the game. Maybe people are waking up to that fact on a global scale now?