The EPL last season rewarded teams in £800,000 increments for their final position on the ladder. Bottom-placed Portsmouth received the minimum, whereas champions Chelsea trousered £16m.

Calculating the total financial benefit of qualifying for the Champions League is dependent on many factors. Making the qualifying stages is worth €3m from UEFA, the group stage an extra €2.4m. Each group stage win is worth €800,000 and a draw €400,000. In addition, quarter finalists receive €2.5m, semi-finalists €3m, €4m for the runners-up and €7m for the winners. Not to mention ticket sales and matchday revenue from the extra games, as well as the extra merchandise, advertising, television and other lucrative spin-off opportunities.

These are the stakes that were allowed to be influenced this weekend by an assistant referee incorrectly guessing that a Chelsea shot had crossed the Tottenham goal-line.

With the game poised 1-0 in Spurs' favour on the stroke of half-time, the decision critically altered the course of a fixture that will go a long way to deciding the destination of the Premier League title and also the destination of English sides in Europe next season.

It is a joke that decisions of such significance remain in the realm of doubt.

There is no other sport in the world where the value of a score is so high. Goals are not commonplace in soccer. For example, just eight goals have been scored in regular time in the last six World Cup finals.

Why risk such a small number of the most critical decisions to chance? It simply beggars belief.

Throw in the seemingly bottomless pits of cash the game swims in and the myriad camera angles that relay the incorrect decision immediately into homes throughout time zones and you have a situation where the game's administrators are being wilfully negligent.

Compared to other sports, soccer is in the dark ages. Cricket, tennis, rugby's league and union are all examples of how technology can be used to increase decision-making accuracy at the most critical junctures. There is no more critical moment in any team sport than the scoring of a goal in soccer.

The football community takes its lead from the international regulatory body, FIFA. This unimpeachable rabble of member self-interest, back scratching and backhanders is led by Sepp Blatter. President Blatter is currently electioneering for a fourth consecutive stint in the top job, and had this to say on the subject of goal-line technology in 2008: "Other sports regularly change the laws of the game to react to the new technology. We don't do it and this makes the fascination and the popularity of football." In other words, ‘we don't think anything's broken, so we're not going to fix it.' Thanks Sepp. Enjoy your lifetime of free holidays to Qatar while multi-million dollar decisions continue to be butchered on your watch.

The theory underpinning Blatter's Luddism and denial of ‘new technology' is also patently nonsense. Sides are allowed to play on artificial pitches, under stadia with roofs, wearing bladed boots, in clima-cool fabrics, over GPS trackers etc etc...

The key element of Blatter's position (and that of many others, including Michel Platini, head of UEFA) is that soccer should remain a game played by fallible humans and refereed by fallible humans. This argument then builds into doomsday scenarios that decisions, even when referred cannot be guaranteed, that it begins with goal-line technology and ends with every decision challenged remotely and that, ultimately, the referee's decision is no longer final.

The premise of such positions, that the game remains as pure and unfettered by influence as possible is laudable. But it is also naïve in the extreme and ignores the damage that is being done to soccer's credibility and trust in the outcome of matches. On Saturday, within seconds it was obvious to millions that, despite the assistant referee being in the correct position (his main task was to spot any offside from Frank Lampard's shot) this meant that he was woefully misplaced to adjudicate whether the whole of the ball had crossed the whole of the line.

What is so wrong with giving that man some help?

There are currently two ideas on the table to solve the problem. Ironically, these were revisited by FIFA following another Frank Lampard incident, when, during the last World Cup, he was not awarded a goal for England against Germany despite the ball clearly crossing the line.

The most advanced is a modification of Hawk-Eye technology. First trialled back in 2007-08, this appeared to produce positive results, so positive in fact that FIFA, much to the Hawk-Eye developer's consternation, pulled their support. The second embeds a magnet in the ball, alerting a goal-line sensor when a goal is scored.

While FIFA continues to fudge any decision, certain tournaments are treated to the bizarre spectacle of more assistant referees standing behind the goal-line. Desperate to retain the ‘human element' of the decision-making process, these mannequins fail to do anything of use, save provide extra ammunition for coaches seething at decisions made against their sides.

The longer goal-line technology is ignored, the greater the number of avoidable injustices will occur. If FIFA is true to its motto ‘for the good of the game,' it will do something about it.