Chelsea v Tottenham: It took just seconds to see how bad a mistake Martin Atkinson made

Football fans all over the world would have been wondering how Martin Atkinson gave Chelsea their second goal.

There is no getting away from it, it was a dreadful decision. Replays, which were available for us all to see within seconds, proved what a terrible judgement call it was from Atkinson as the ball clearly did not cross the line.

Most unusual was that Atkinson gave the decision himself. A goal/no goal decision is usually left solely to the assistant referee who would have been looking straight along the goal line, appeared to be taken by Atkinson alone.

It's ironic that he has been invited to Euro 2012 - as a goal-line assistant.

You can usually tell from the reactions of a player if you have possibly made an unbelievable error, when you have the reaction of a whole team like Tottenham yesterday, you know you have made an unbelievable error. Aaron Lennon, Scott Parker and Kyle Walker all showed their clear frustration at the decision.

It's not the first time Atkinson has been at the centre of a goal-line technology debate. Just five weeks ago he refused to award a goal to QPRs Clint Hill against Bolton after claims he had scored. Again video replays, available in seconds, showed it was a clear goal.

With goals, referees usually use the defence of poor viewing angles for missing such incidents, but for some unexplainable reason yesterday, Atkinson did not. He made a bold decision, arguably a match changing decision, and got it wrong.

But what people must remember, and as Harry Redknapp said himself, he made it honestly. He did not plan to make that big decision, the incident happened, he made a big call but unfortunately for Atkinson it was completely wrong.

'To miss something is understandable, but to see something that did not happen is unacceptable.'

That is something that all referees are told. They can not see everything, it's just impossible. But the worst thing they can do is start seeing things that did not happen.

Mistakes like this creep up now and again and will continue to appear until goal-line technology is introduced. As far as most, referees even more so, it can not come quickly enough. Unfortunately for Atkinson it did not come quickly enough.