So cruel. To hear the Champions League anthem once again rattling our rafters and then to lose Mason Mount to an ankle injury about 10 minutes later felt like one of those nasty trade-off deals that the gods seem to go in for when they’re feeling particularly spiteful.Then there was Ross Barkley’s potentially game-saving last-gasp penalty which also rattled the rafters, though not in quite such a good way.Incidentally, for what it’s worth, that incident at the end there was the first occasion on which I have been even remotely persuaded of the value of VAR as entertainment for the spectator in the ground. Up until now, I have thought of video referral as a project which was brutally indifferent to the paying punter and skewed entirely towards television viewers, and all in all (ironically, given that its founding mission is apparently to remove the possibility of these things) a monumental mistake.

But then, on Tuesday, the pause while the referee consulted his ear-piece, the flashing up of the alert on the big screen (in both English and Spanish, naturally), the rising tension as the ref jogged to the West Stand touchline to consult his private TV monitor, and then the explosive celebratory roar as he returned to the field to draw his invisible rectangle in the air and point theatrically to the spot... well, even I would have to admit that these moments yielded gold-standard jollity for those of us in attendance, not least in a second half which had fallen a bit flat late on.But I still don’t think we should have it.I refer back to Spain in March, when, during a review in a La Liga match between Real Madrid and Real Valladolid, the television coverage cut to the VAR room, as it very much enjoys doing, only to find the place entirely empty – just a bank of unmanned screens glowing forlornly in a vacant office. Now, they’d cut to the wrong room; everyone was in the suite next door. Nevertheless, that incident and the moment of exquisite comedy that it produced, seems to me to be a more defining moment for VAR, going forward, than anything that happened at the Bridge on Tuesday.Anyway, the positive upshot is that now we all know the Spanish for ‘Possible penalty check’ (‘comprobacion di potencial penalti’). And for anyone interested in taking their colloquial skills further, the Spanish for ‘he’s only gone and ballooned it against the bar’ is ‘solo se ha ido y lo hincho contra la barra’. Or so this web-based translator tells me.

It could, and perhaps should, have been different. Tammy might have scored with that header. Willian might have scored by using that sensational Kovacic through-ball, and he might have passed to Pedro at the end of that whirlwind second-half break. One felt particularly sorry for Fikayo Tomori: to play so well and leave the pitch a loser seemed especially unfair in his case. But the wind in this team’s new sails will come and go. That’s part of the journey, and maybe even part of the fun.

And, of course, some small measure of consolation was immediately to hand in the form of Liverpool’s defeat to Napoli. The media did their usual solemn, hand-wringing thing of packaging the two results together (ours and Liverpool’s) under the category ‘a disappointing night for English clubs in Europe’. But that’s because the media don’t understand, or choose to ignore, how it works for the actual followers of football: which is to say, if it’s been a disappointing night for English clubs in general, then, by definition, it’s been a slightly less disappointing night than it might have been for yours in particular. Unless, of course, you subscribe to the idea of ‘just wanting the English clubs to do well’, a concept heartily endorsed by absolutely no one I have ever met who supports an English football team.On the contrary, it’s a fact as certain as death and taxes that any disappointments you might be feeling after your team has converted a dominant performance into no points against Valencia will be at least partly dispersed if Liverpool have somehow found a way to come badly a-cropper in Italy. And so it was on Tuesday, the news of the defending champion’s capitulation in Naples at least slightly lightening one’s tread and lifting one’s chin on the way back to the car.However, a chafing aspect of our slip-up was the way it dulled the gale of optimism that seemed to be blowing through the club after the 5-2 pounding of Wolves last Saturday. Even then, though, there are aspects of that performance that should survive the hit and keep us all afloat, not least the 10-minute, three-goal spell in the first half, and not least the first of those goals. When the ball hits the back of the Molineux net, that’s Tomori. That shot appeared to have molten lava dripping from it and, on impact, its own soundtrack of an explosion. In other words, it was one of those vanishingly rare occasions when the football you see on the pitch looks exactly like the football you see in adverts.Meanwhile, as this potentially tricky away-game hurdle was being leaped with whole metres to spare, results in other matches were demonstrating once again the extraordinary volatility of the Premier League, where genuine threats can legitimately be said to lurk everywhere, even at Tottenham – and, who knows, maybe even at West Ham. Despite all the media talk of an unshakeable two-team monopoly developing at the top of the league which the rest of us will just have to be content to fold our arms and watch, Manchester City were soundly beaten by newly promoted Norwich.And let’s face it, a league in which Manchester United can defy the odds and cling on to an early penalty advantage to force a scruffy 1-0 home win against Leicester is clearly a league in which nobody can afford to take anything for granted. With these thoughts in mind, bring on recently vanquished Liverpool on Sunday.