Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Jonathan Wilson and Dan Bardell as Chelsea secure a vital win over Liverpool in the race for Champions League football next season

Rate, review, share on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud, Acast and Stitcher, and join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter and email.

On the podcast today; Chelsea inflict a third defeat of the season on Liverpool to help them in the race for fifth place, Cole Palmer returning to form and Roméo Lavia back in the centre might just be enough to get them over the line.

Three times the referee Craig Pawson awarded penalties to Newcastle in the second half. Twice they were overturned by VAR but the third one stood, and Alexander Isak converted to earn Newcastle a vital point in the race for Champions League football. They had not played well, but they never do against Brighton, and in that context a draw earned with an 89th-minute equaliser was extremely welcome.

“Keeping our composure and making sure our performance wasn’t affected by the outcomes [of the VAR decisions] was key,” said the Newcastle manager Eddie Howe, who acknowledged the VAR was right to rule out the first two penalties. “If you look at the season as a whole we probably haven’t dug out enough points from games that are in the balance.

Super League patron Florentino Pérez sets the tone with his destructive acts of pettiness, dragging down a once noble club

Referees have never been so disdained and despised as they are now. Those who do not think they are corrupt, think they are incompetent. Standards, apparently, have never been lower. Clubs and their fans rage about conspiracies. But even in the present context, the scenes at the end of last Saturday’s Copa del Rey final were unprecedented as Antonio Rüdiger threw an ice-pack at the referee Ricardo de Burgos Bengoetxea.

And to think this is a club that used to pride itself on its sense of its señorio, its gentlemanliness, to the extent that in Steve McManaman’s day players were given a code of conduct; the familiar line used to be whingeing about referees was for the cry-babies of Barcelona.