The rotten culture that is seeping ever deeper into football was exemplified by the announcement that one of the game’s most successful referees had retired.Anthony Taylor’s decision to end his illustrious career sparked an outpouring of gratitude and respect from his colleagues that was overwhelmed by widespread derision from some football supporters.On X, the NY Knicks star and celebrity Chelsea fan Josh Hart responded to the news by simply tweeting “Thank the lord” to his 750,000 followers, prompting 34,000 likes and rising.Does Hart have a case? Well, in the past four seasons, Taylor refereed Chelsea 15 times and they lost just twice, which hardly suggests bias.Over the same period, he sent off one player in blue, and that was only after a VAR intervention — Taylor’s instinct was to let Moises Caicedo stay on the pitch against Arsenal last season, until he watched replays proving that would be a mistake.His sole grievous error was in August 2022, when he did not spot Cristian Romero pull the hair of Marc Cucurella late in Chelsea’s home game with Tottenham Hotspur. Instead, Spurs were allowed to take a corner, from which Harry Kane equalised. But that was more a failure of VAR, which saw the incident but decided to keep quiet.Of course, many fans of clubs are so delusional that the facts are irrelevant. They will go back further in time, or cite correct calls that they did not like, or point to the smaller decisions on more mundane matters that might have swayed a result. And as a former colleague of Taylor’s, I would say all of this, wouldn’t I?But the evidence shows that if Taylor really was trying to swing matches against Chelsea, he wasn’t very good at it.