On Saturday evening, top-flight referee Mike Dean red carded West Ham's Tomas Soucek.

The sending off, which involved VAR and seemed to depend on a definition of what is 'violent conduct', caused controversy, animating fans, managers, players and pundits.

This morning we wrote about the incident, trying to see it from a sensible point of view.

So it was very troubling to learn this afternoon that Mike Dean - and his family - have been the target of foul and abusive messages, including some that amount to death threats.

Football thrives on controversy. Fans enjoy analysing the rights and wrongs of a game, and armchair managers and referees are everywhere.

There is no excuse, however, for turning opinion into menacing bile.

Only days ago, football was yet again deploring the amount of racist messages directed at prominent players.

It is clear that there is something very rotten within the game, among a minority of oddballs who pretend to support it, and who have the time and inclination to try to intimidate people - in this case, after a sending off in the 97th minute of a scoreless drawn match.

Mike Dean has reported the threats to Merseyside Police, and asked not to officiate in any Premier League games at the weekend. However, he is expected to referee the F.A. Cup match between Leicester and Brighton on Wednesday.

Head of referees Mike Riley said: "Threats and abuse of this nature are totally unacceptable and we fully support Mike's decision to report these messages his family received to the police.

"Nobody should be a victim of abhorrent messages like this. Online abuse is unacceptable in any walk of life and more needs to be done to tackle the problem."