Former Premier League referee Howard Webb has leapt to the defence of officials in the face of increasing criticism of performances in recent weeks.
Roger East is the latest referee to face the ire of managers and pundits alike after he sent off Wes Brown during Sunderland's 2-0 defeat at Manchester United for a foul which was actually committed by John O'Shea.
Sunderland boss Gus Poyet insisted that refereeing standards in England must improve after the game, and the club succeeded in overturning the red card for Brown on appeal.
The one-match suspension was not transferred to O'Shea, however, as a statement released by the Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL) on Saturday evening insisted that East intended to dismiss Brown and there was no case of mistaken identity.
That led to Keith Hackett, a former head of the referees' board, calling on Webb to return to the game in a bid to improve the standard of officiating.
Webb retired last summer when he was aged just 42 and was widely regarded as the best referee in the country, having taken charge of both the World Cup final and the Champions League final in 2010.
He is now the technical director of PGMOL, giving analysis of performance to all top-level referees within hours of games being played.
"Modern football is highly chaotic, with incidents happening in different places simultaneously," he explained to The Times. "You are running across the pitch, heart beating at 170 beats per minute, using your judgment to focus on the right things, using your knowledge and gut instinct as effectively as possible.
"But no matter how good you are, no matter how motivated, you will make mistakes. We are human. And we only have one pair of eyes.
"It really hurts [when you make mistakes]. It did right till the end with me. And I know it does for people in the select group now, because I speak to them.
"The guys deal with it in different ways. Some will ring me and speak to me for three hours on the Sunday about the previous day. They just want to get it all out there. They want to rationalise what's gone off.
"They want to be told: you are not losing your mind, you are not losing your ability. And we explore why the mistake happened, and how we can avoid it happening in the future.
"When I speak to the guys on the way home, they sometimes struggle to admit they made a mistake at first. That is very human. They know what they saw at the time and why they made the decision. They are often committed to it.
"Only when we explore the incident the next day can they see the mistake, and why it happened."
He added: "The worst thing is to be affected by the abuse. You cannot question yourself, or start to doubt your judgment. If you become tentative as a referee, or if you stop trusting your gut instinct, you are not going to perform."