THE argument is surely a simple one. If the technology exists and if it is practical to apply it, there is no reason why football should hold back. And if it can be achieved without disrupting the all-important integrity of the sport, then we say, by all means, let’s see referees equipped with artificial brains.

In the past, when artificial intelligence was in its blueprint stages, it did not appear to lend itself straightforwardly to a refereeing application. Early human brain substitutes were unreliable and cumbersome to the point where they would need to be carted about in a supermarket trolley — not a particularly viable notion, given the famously hectic pace of the English game.

Our own times, however, have seen amazing advances in microchip technology and parallel developments in laser and keyhole surgery, such that intelligence for referees is no longer merely the dream of science fiction. Today’s plastic brain is an insertion no bigger than a cereal packet and can be powered by a simple DC battery-pack, discretely attached to a belt or “bum bag”.

These ultra-refined units can spot arms raised in the penalty area, players going down too easily, balls crossing the goalline by a yard and myriad other infringements that today’s unassisted official inevitably has problems with. So sophisticated is this new generation of artificial brain, it can even detect and respond to a trip on a visiting team’s attacker in the penalty area at Old Trafford, a feat of cognition that has defeated naturally endowed referees for years.

Scientists confidently predict that, in due time, they will have the means to create an entirely remote-controlled intelligence system, allowing officials to be propelled from the stands, or from a blimp — the so-called “brain-box in the sky” option. It will mean that the referee can be steered by someone who actually knows what they are doing, such as a fan, the referee’s former woodwork teacher, or Mark Lawrenson.

But that’s for the future. In the meantime, the only barrier preventing football from sorting out the referees’ brain problem is expense. What does it cost to replace a referee’s brain? Factoring in the materials and the surgeon’s time, it’s got to be at least 300 quid a pop, batteries not included. And when you multiply that by the number of officials required to work up and down the country, you’re looking at an overall spend that could prove prohibitive, certainly for the lower leagues.

It may be, then, that we need to make the conversion in stages, first creating an elite, salaried corps of brained-up refs who are appointed to officiate at the big games. The braining programme could then be rolled out in increments. And as with DVD players that can record, so, presumably, with plastic brains is there bound to be a “price breakthrough” eventually, putting the technology within reach even of the Coca-Cola Championship.

So much for referees’ brains. As for the kind of external technical assistance that everyone has been hysterically screaming for after the oversight at Old Trafford this week, our advice would be for football to steer well clear. It’s one thing to bring the referees up to speed, but quite another to burden the game and erode its crucial humanity with replays and off-the-pitch referals.

The innovation with the most wind behind it seems to be a ball that reports on its own whereabouts via a cunningly inserted microchip. It will get no backing here. Such a ball would be disconcertingly open to tampering by agents — either Russian or sports. Also, how would you safeguard the system against interference from other electronic signals, such as mobile phone networks? The notion that one day, while innocently texting a friend on the other side of the ground, I might accidentally score for Tottenham Hotspur is too awful to contemplate.

Why go to the trouble anyway? It’s not even as if over-the-line debates happen often. The best efforts of the archivists this week yielded a maximum of five memorable incidents in 40 years. It’s hardly a storm of controversy.

But if we must be panicked into incorporating a new coping device, let it at least be one that compensates for the loss of valuable amusement that is guaranteed to spectators by entrusting these matters to a fallible ref. Our suggestion in this area is for the replacement of the goal net by a Spider-Man-style web, exactly a ball’s width behind the line. You would know when the ball had crossed the line because it would stick. Goal! Boy, that one really rippled the old web! True, the disadvantage is that players, too, might get caught up in the stickiness. But it would serve them right for defending so deep.

Let’s face it, most of the time football is no fun at all. Most of the time, for multiple reasons, football is agony. It starts to be fun, however, when Roy Carroll drops the ball a mile over his line and neither the ref nor his assistant sees it. What else would we have talked about this week? What would Sir Geoff Hurst have talked about for the past 38½ years?

Put it another way: if you decline all extraneous assistance, you leave alive the possibility that, at some point in the future, it will be a Manchester United player whose match-winning shot is fumbled over the line in the 90th minute without the referee noticing. At Arsenal, say. At the climax of the season. And then Sir Alex Ferguson will have to give a post-match interview on the topic. You don’t want to see that? You’re not interested in football.

Money buys a lot of romance

THERE is no small irony in the Football Association telling non-League clubs that it will make having a fit stadium a condition of entry into the FA Cup. For most non-League clubs, the best chance of having a fit stadium is — like Yeading — by drawing Newcastle United and switching the tie to Loftus Road, thereby earning £300,000 to buy turnstiles and segregated seating areas.

The idea that this measure will preserve the Cup’s fabled “romance” is equally muddled. For non-League clubs, £300,000 is the romance of the Cup — a romance you can warm your hands around.