CALL ME paranoid - go on, you know you want to - but when Avram Grant is called to "explain his remarks" to the English FA, certain outcomes are liable to remain unlikely. If Chelsea's coach happens to ask, for an example, just why Paul Scholes was not sent packing for actually outrageous behaviour during Manchester United's last triumphant outing, indignation will become righteous, then widespread.

Simple agreement - even "You might have a point there, Avram" - will be limited indeed.

Equally, if the Israeli persists with the idea that certain clubs, naming no names, receive a certain amount of leeway from certain officials, censures and questions of sanity are liable to be invoked. Such ideas must never be mentioned.

It is as fantastic, after all, as Craig Levein making a connection between a 3-1 result, one disallowed goal, one clear penalty, and a gentleman who referees as a "hobby". Favours to the heroes of Madchester? Gifts to the gents from Govan? This never happens.

On the other hand, paranoia has become something of a feature of late in the wider European game. Somehow, the big clubs seem just to get bigger, even when they play like small fry.

"Making your own luck" has become an art form.

The issue was last raised, I think, when Alex McLeish was in charge at Ibrox. His explanation then was to this effect: a big, attacking, winning side is always liable to occupy the opposing penalty box. Decisions involving spot-kicks and such are therefore, logically, likely to follow.

To which the universe beyond the Old Firm replied: Aye, right.

Losers always require excuses, of course. Mr Grant, meanwhile, had a date in Moscow to consider, and all those tedious tabloid "mind games" to play out with Sir Alex Ferguson. The idea of Chelsea as nature's underdogs also requires a few adjustments to known reality. But still.

Are all officials immune to all forms of influence? No-one who has ever watched a kick-around in the park believes such a thing. So are major leagues actually rigged? Say it ain't so, Joe, but in point of fact I would struggle to believe such a notion. That's not, for one thing, a secret you can keep easily. That's also not a smart way to handle your stock in trade, or your unique TV selling point. Corrupt sports - athletics-types may be aware - bleed money.

People who lose to Man U or the Old Firm - and that would be most interested parties - need to believe in pernicious influence. Predictable enough, you could say. But it is vastly more logical just to accept that sometimes a referee isn't up to the job, that the job is absurdly difficult to begin with, and that mistakes happen.

Mr Levein is correct in that respect. In his case, the ref not only erred, to the advantage of Ibrox, but contradicted himself subsequently in his references to the opinions of other officials. So why not have full-time, professional and wholly-accountable officials?

It has become an oddity of the modern game. Tens of millions - or in Dundee United's case, hundreds of Uefa thousands - can hang on the choices made by a bloke pursuing "a hobby". It makes about as much sense as putting me in charge. Fair warning on that: don't ever take the chance.

We know, however, that in some enclaves of the game - let's hazard Italy, for a guess - crookedness has been, may yet be, "cultural". Mere talent and the rules of a sport have been regarded by some as insufficient. Games have been fixed and refs have been nobbled. The idea of corruption meanwhile rumbles away, like distant thunder, in the backwaters of the English Premiership. Just to call a thing "unthinkable" does not, in fact, prevent it from happening.

Scholes should have gone off: everyone (the player included) knows it. Dundee United should have had that penalty: even the loyal and true do not dispute the fact seriously. But does any of that add up to the kind of pattern a crim-inologist would find significant? In this case, call me ambivalent.

The trouble with the notion of professionalising the business of refereeing is two-fold. First, you risk dumping even more attention on the hapless official. The attention and scrutiny would be such that no-one, even a God-like columnist, would ever again manage an unbiased opinion. Then you would be stuck with that strange (and wholly unreliable) affair called "video evidence".

Mr Levein wants that, too, and I can see his point. But I can also see proper football ending up as a pale shadow of the rugby union variety, or the American gridiron cartoon. When does it stop, and how, with those machines, does it ever start?

The second problem is more serious, I think. It is this: once you doubt the referee, you doubt the game itself. Coaches have been pushing the edges of this envelope for a decade or two. Post-match "comments" by losing managers have become increasingly bold, or honest, or accusatory, or merely manipulative.

Often enough they are right, though, and too often justified. There is, after all, a lot of money at stake, and the individuals in quest-ion are under fantastic degrees of stress. Also - but dare one say it? - some decisions are beyond "odd". Mr Levein and Mr Scholes, in their differing ways, could probably explain.

But let me be even more simplistic than usual: the referee's decision is final. That's the game. Take it away and you might as well put the ball up over the slates once and finally. Question his parentage, if you like. Question, if you must, his tribal devotions. Nevertheless, if you argue with the official, if you talk back, insinuate, or insult, the sport loses all meaning.

Still, Scholes was a disgrace and Dundee United were robbed. I was a witness. Some blokes in black costumes did it and ran way. Those are my decisions. And that's how league titles are won.