Sherwood told reporters afterwards that if it had been a boxing match, the referee would have called it off at half time. But boxing matches don't have half times, and 2-1 is no kind of unassailable lead whatever Tactical Tim might think and say in the brief interludes between his pitch incursions and haranguing of passing linesmen which Pawson was happy to allow to continue unchecked all night.

It should have come via a Charlie Austin penalty kick. The extra man in midfield, the renewed purpose, the added possession higher up the field, all provided a wonderful platform for Matt Phillips to set to work on Villa left back Kieran Richardson. The former Blackpool winger had a superb second half. Ten minutes after the break he burst past his man and delivered a cross into the area which was, fairly obviously, right in front of Mullarkey, stopped with the palm of Delph’s hand. Mullarkey officiated all evening like somebody who'd been the victim of a blunt trauma to the back of the head in the tunnel immediately before kick-off and he looked right at the incident and scratched his right arse cheek. Craig Pawson, whose grasp of the handball rules could kindly be described as "loose" as anybody at the recent QPR v Spurs game would testify to, also looked gormless and gave nothing.

The Sheffield-based official, new to the Premier League list, had been to Shepherd’s Bush twice already this season prior to Saturday and awarded Rangers a penalty against both Hull City and West Bromwich Albion — both questionable decisions. Maybe he was minded to make sure a third didn’t follow, less questions be asked of his integrity, because against Mauricio Pochetinno’s side he turned down two stone-wall appeals and a third very decent looking shout.

The most obvious came a quarter of an hour from time. A corner form the right, a ball dropping in the area, and Charlie Austin was on hand to sweep home a goal his all-action, tireless overall display richly deserved. Except for Nabil Bentaleb, who bravely, but illegally, flung himself in front of the shot with both his hands raised above his head and palmed the ball away to safety. A brilliant save. If he was the goalkeeper. We’re told the interpretation of the ‘deliberate handball’ rule is the hands being in an unnatural position. Bentaleb’s could scarcely have been in a more unnatural position had he detached them and worn them as shoes. It was so astonishingly blatant it was laughable. Pawson, and his linesman, looked right at it, from two different angles, and waved it away.

That followed a first half incident where Mauricio Isla, recalled to the starting 11 on the right side of midfield ahead of Nedum Onuoha at right back, nudged a dangerous cross past visiting goalkeeper Hugo Lloris and then hit the deck as the French stopper caught him in the gut as he rushed out to meet his opponent with a flying star jump. Again, it was a penalty. Again, Pawson looked right at it and awarded nothing. There was another in the second half when Eric Dier, impressive otherwise, seemed to climb over the top of Bobby Zamora, who partnered Austin in attack, and illegally wrestle him away from the ball in the penalty area.

Ryan Mason, a wonderful player you’d kill to have at the base of QPR’s midfield, particularly on a day like this when Karl Henry and Sandro offered almost nothing positive in either direction, was allowed to commit two bad fouls before finally being booked for a third. When Henry nailed him back Spurs boss Mauricio Pochettino was allowed to come out of his dugout, walk onto the field and drag his player away so prevent him reacting and being sent off. Ten minutes later Pochetinno was, bizarrely, out on the field again, remonstrating with Pawson for failing to give a free kick, while the play was progressing down the field. No action was taken.

In the first minute of the game Hugo Lloris staggered across his goal mouth and reached up to produce an unorthodox but effective one handed save up in the top corner as Bobby Zamora tried to angle home a clever header. Pawson awarded a goal kick. He thought it had hit the bar. That didn’t bode well.

It is universally accepted that the standards of refereeing in the Premier League this year are abysmal. Far worse than they’ve been for years, certainly as bad as we’ve seen since the officials turned professional.

Howard Webb, still the best referee in the country when he retired last season, has responded to this not by promising improvements and admitting problems, but by defending the indefensible. When placed on the spot on Monday Night Football early this season with clips of three hideous Manchester City tackles on QPR players that were punished only with the award of a free kick only for Mike Dean to then yellow card Sandro for a routine trip on the halfway line, his and Rangers’ first foul of the game after half an hour, he produced five mealy mouthed minutes the upshot of which was he believed Dean was right. Last week, after Kevin Friend had made a mess of Southampton v Liverpool that a deaf, blind, mute would have struggled to replicate and Roger East had sent the wrong man off at Man Utd before claiming that all the television footage you’d seen had fooled you and he was in fact right after all, Webb was treated to a three page blow job in the broadsheets about how he has to counsel the officials after every game because the criticism is so fierce. He insisted again that 95% of the decisions given this season have been correct, according to the assessors. The same assessors who watched Martin Atkinson referee Chelsea Burnley in a manner so incompetent it actually became dangerous for the players to be out there with him and concluded he’d got every decision right. How can standards improve when the people in charge of ensuring that happens don’t think anything is wrong?

Perhaps, as well as dropping this pointless façade about all the decisions being correct, which we can patently see is utter bollocks, Webb and Mike Riley, might like to look closer to home. There are 17 professional referees this season, down from 22 when they first turned pro. They are overworked. People make mistakes when tired. Why in the name of God was Pawson dragged down from Sheffield to London last Sunday to be the fourth official (monkey work) at the League Cup final, only to then be sent all the way up to Carlisle for a nothing League One game with Cheltenham on Tuesday, and then back to the other end of the country on Saturday for this? Was there nobody else to sit and listen to Mourinho’s conspiracy theories and operate the board at Wembley? Are there no League One referees to referee Tuesday night League One games at pissing Carlisle? A human being who has done nothing this week other than travel and referee made mistakes. Who would have thought it?

This is what you get when you take Mike Riley, one of the worst referees of the modern era, and put him in charge. The only surprise is he hasn’t yet introduced a rule whereby Manchester United get to take a penalty after every goal they concede, as he tried so desperately to effect when he was trotting around with the whistle wrecking football matches.

At which point we turn to the classic line the beleaguered football officials of this country like to trot out when their backs are to the wall like this and they’ve made clear, obvious mistakes that didn’t need television replays to expose. The players make mistakes as well. For all the justified complaining about Pawson and his decision making here, QPR were poor and deserved to lose.

It wasn’t Craig Pawson, for example, who looked at Matt Phillips suddenly playing brilliantly on the right wing, and grabbing four assists in as many games, and decided to move him to the left from the start here. A perplexing move from Chris Ramsey, a man who has done so much to reinvigorate Phillips’ career at Loftus Road in his month in charge so far. Phillips’ recent success has been based on a simple premise that he should get the ball tight to the touchline, take the full back on and deliver a cross. The results have been refreshingly brilliant. On Saturday, shifted to the left, he was back to the cutting inside, over-complicated bullshit he produced to no effect whatsoever when Harry Redknapp was shuffling him around and using him as a striker and other such total nonsense.

Pawson initially embarked on a quest to even things up. Farcically penalising Henry for very little on the edge of his own area allowing Gardner to strike a deflected free kick towards goal and draw a save from Rob Green. The keeper later thrust up a hand to palm Sessegnon's powerful drive away, and Richard Dunne was rightly yellow carded for crashing into the back of Varela as he threatened to turn away into space once more. The half time positives from a QPR point of view could be scribbled on the back of a postage stamp with a thick pen: only one goal down, could scarcely play any worse second half.

Barton should have had a penalty for his efforts too. Clearly tripped by a lazy hanging leg from Morrison, again, he was told to get to his feet by referee Pawson, possibly because the fall to ground was so exaggerated and theatrical. Blatant spot kick though, Morrison behaving as though he’d put QPR on his coupon.

Austin, who scored five out of five from the spot in 2013/14, grasped the ball immediately to his chest while Hull protested the decision, and looked confident as he stepped up at the Loft End, but Hull goalkeeper Alan McGregor and his understudy Steve Harper had picked up a quirk of Austin’s run up in their pre-match homework that can give away the direction of his kicks and the Scottish stopped saved the ball low to his right. Not only that but, crucially, he managed to scoop away the rebound with his trailing leg. Rangers’ centre forward will have to wait another week at least for a first ever Premier League goal.

Hull will claim that justice was done. Chester’s hand had been down by his side and made no deliberate move towards the ball when he was penalised for blocking a cross from substitute Junior Hoilett. Whether the penalty decision from Pawson, a relative newcomer to the top division himself after promotion last season, signifies a change in interpretation from the “unnatural position” understanding we seemed to have reached last season, and a move towards the way they work in La Liga where penalties are awarded for the ball striking the hand regardless of position, intent or distance from the player only time will tell but it seemed like a harsh call to me.

At the midway point of the first half a terrific pass from Joey Barton gave Remy a chance to turn inside Davies and extract the game’s first yellow card. The free kick was well right of centre and seemed ideally placed for Faurlin’s left foot only for Barton to step forward and try to curl it right round the wall and into the net on the keeper’s blind side. Shane Warne in his prime couldn’t have turned a ball that far and the attempt was pure ego. As I feared when Barton scored a fine dipping free kick at Leyton Orient in pre-season, he’s clearly going to insist on taking absolutely every dead ball that Rangers get this season and his execution of a range of set pieces here was wildly inconsistent.