It doesn’t get any easier for Carlisle United. The Orient game was postponed on Tuesday, and at the time of writing there are doubts about the Crawley match.

We’ve always had trouble with the frost. Even going back to the 60s, it was always the Warwick Road End, which gets sheltered from the sun. They tried all sorts: braziers, covering it in straw and different things.

Once the frost gets in, you’ve got to have a sudden thaw. If it’s gradual it can take days.

I don’t think anyone’s panicking about Carlisle dropping down to eighth. Not when they’re still only two points off the automatic promotion places, with between three and five games in hand on the teams above them. But if any more games are postponed it will be very hard.

They’re running out of Tuesdays to play rearranged games on. Two games a week is manageable. If it goes to three, that will be tough, even with the squad Chris Beech has assembled.

Hopefully the game at Harrogate will go ahead next Tuesday: third time lucky. Harrogate are doing pretty well in their first season in the league, mid-table and well away from the relegation zone, which will always have been their main aim.

I’ve talked about the importance of psychology in football. I wonder if that’s playing a part now with Liverpool. From going 68 home games unbeaten in the league, they’ve now lost three in a row. I’m sure the absence of fans is one factor. Watching their games, from the start it just doesn’t seem like Liverpool. They’re not putting teams under pressure for 15-minute spells. They’ve lost big players to injury, especially Virgil van Dijk. And players like Mo Salah are being linked with other clubs. That might have an effect.

Before, Liverpool just expected to win. And the opposition probably expected them to. They might have been too cautious. Now teams are quite happy to take the game to Liverpool.

The big talking point last weekend was Tomas Soucek’s sending off for West Ham against Fulham. VAR dominated all the talk about football yet again. The idea that it was going to end controversies never made sense – it just creates more of them. There are always grey areas in football. It’s still down to somebody’s interpretation of what happened.

Not for the first time, Mike Dean was the referee at the centre of it. You get the feeling that certain referees enjoy the spotlight. When I was playing, Clive Thomas was one. And Roger Kirkpatrick. He seemed to have the headlines every other week.

I do feel for some of the refs. Most were doing a pretty good job without VAR. When you get a referee watching an incident on the screen 10 or 20 times, it’s obvious they’re not certain. They could change their mind even as they’re walking back to the players. And this is without crowds. Imagine going over to the screen at a packed Anfield or Old Trafford.

With incidents like the Soucek one, players have to take some of the blame for going down too easily. I did it myself, to be honest. With a left-back that had the legs on you, clip his heels and go down. It’s easy to blame referees but players are also responsible.