I’m tired. I’m really tired.

Every cloud has a silver lining, as they say, and one silver lining of West Ham’s impending relegation to the Championship is that we won’t have to put up with the VAR farce for at least another season.

I still haven’t gotten over it. Forget Maxwel Cornet and Edouard Mendy in 2022, forget Declan Rice’s supposed “handball” that denied a huge point in the 2020 relegation scrap – this will be the defining West Ham VAR call.

It may genuinely be the defining moment of the season. My God, it may be the defining VAR call since its introduction in 2019.

(As I was writing that last sentence, I just heard Spurs have taken the lead against Leeds. *Huge sigh*)

Everyone has given their opinion on yesterday’s decision, and nineteen out of the twenty fanbases seem to believe that we were robbed by Chris Kavanagh and Darren England. That’s telling. Look, at the end of the day, calls like this are subjective. But I can’t remember an officiating decision in the Premier League that was so unanimously criticised.

And it’s not even the fact that the decision was wrong; it was the magnitude of the situation. That decision likely relegates West Ham, likely hands the North London Wrestling Federation the title, and makes a moment in Stratford the most talked-about topic in the world for twenty-four hours.

Like I said, everyone has given their opinion and analysis of that corner – I won’t be adding anything you haven’t heard already. But the stakes of the situation still astound me.

Big Six bias aside, I genuinely think that if Callum Wilson equalises on 65 minutes, that goal probably stands – at the very least, there wouldn’t have been a five-minute wait to decide the outcome.

And not only were we robbed of a vital point, we were robbed of a magic moment that could’ve given us momentum and really charged us on in these last two games.

VAR has robbed me of so much joy since its introduction. I know it’s a cliché to say “you can’t even celebrate a goal anymore”, but the fact that I couldn’t initially celebrate Jarrod Bowen’s Conference League winner will never sit right with me.

Sunday provided another one of those moments – or rather, it took it away.

I don’t usually pour my emotions out like this, but in these circumstances, I feel the need.

Oh well, as I write this, Hull City have taken the lead against Millwall in the Championship play-offs. Maybe there is some hope.

Update: Leeds have equalised! COME ON!