Kenny Dalglish can take a one-eyed view of refereeing decisions that go against Liverpool. Photograph: Lee Smith/Action Images

It may be instructive for Kenny Dalglish to consider that even David Icke at his maddest has never floated the idea of a referees' conspiracy against Liverpool or any other club – and as a former professional goalkeeper who must have seen a few wrongly awarded penalties whizz past him, the Turquoise One's restraint is remarkable. The Illuminati control the world? Yes. The Queen's a lizard? Yes. The moon's a spacecraft? Yes. Mike Riley's boys conspire to keep Liverpool in eighth place? Don't be so bloody ridiculous.

Even by the standard of depressingly witless statements to emanate from the Liverpool manager this season, the deployment of the c word – "conspiracy" – can hold its own. "We can't believe that," claimed Dalglish, before using the word he can't believe a second time. "We can't let it affect us and take it into the games," he continued heroically, as though it were an act of superhuman stoicism not to believe that a handball decision was the direct result of an officials' pact to destroy him and the club.

Without an Icke playbook to assist us, we're really on our own in picturing how this type of conspiracy would take shape. I imagine it would be hatched in the referees' wood-panelled underground lair, where officials such as Dave Bryan and Michael Oliver clink Baccarat crystal tumblers of insanely expensive whisky below glowering oil portraits of George Courtney and Graham Poll, and concoct their fiendish schemes not to see a bit of barging at Goodison.

No matter that Dalglish's captain, Steven Gerrard, has previously said of unfortunate refereeing decisions that "these things even themselves out over the course of a season". No matter that less than a fortnight ago Sir Alex Ferguson – of whose serial ranting on this subject we shall hear more shortly – appeared to have a moment of reason and claimed: "Most managers believe that the breaks even themselves out." The sad fact is many don't seem to – and, would you believe, their ranks swell remarkably at this end of the season.

I hasten to point out Dalglish is far from alone. There's QPR's Mark Hughes, who claims many of his peers have "lost faith" with referees, while Roberto Martínez is advocating a wholesale clearout of officials. And come Saturday evening, there'll probably be a couple more declining to take responsibility for where eight months of a season has left them.

Perhaps the laws of rightbackatcha demand we style this burgeoning clique as a "conspiracy" of managers, whose systematic aim is to intimidate referees. I believe some may even regard their moans as a branch of the esteemed footballing science of "mind games". But I can't bring myself to feel that it's anything other than a cocktail of misplaced victimhood and low-level bullying – the unsporting pique of the poor loser, doled out by people who demand respect at every turn but see no reason to afford it to others. ("A wee bit of respect would help us immensely," whined Dalglish, in the course of disrespectfully intimating that referees were without integrity.)

Unfortunately, you can't move for apologists for such behaviour saying that things are different nowadays because the financial stakes are so high. Yet contrary to SkyBet's ghastly little erstwhile slogan, it doesn't matter more when there's money on it. Or rather, being sportsmanlike shouldn't matter less even when there's a Champions' League place riding on it, unfathomable though that may seem to a game that largely parted company with principle some time ago.

Alas, it seems to, and we're subjected to frequent managerial suggestions as to what to do about the grave refereeing injustices blighting our nation. A few years ago, one controversial decision moved Ferguson to call for a referees' assessor's assessor, claiming that the then referees' chief Keith Hackett "has got a lot to answer for in this country". But it was Ferguson's then assistant manager Carlos Queiroz who really elevated the argument, insisting that a rule should be introduced allowing referees to be replaced during games if they are perceived to have made a howler.

Dalglish seems bent on following in such footsteps. It would be more "transparent" he claimed, using the word almost as convincingly as George Osborne, "if [referees] explained their decisions to us or even just held their hands up and said: 'Sorry, I got that wrong' … But they never say anything." He appeared to be hinting that officials should break their silence, perhaps envisaging a world where referees hold press conferences with the same frequency managers do.

Needless to say, this isn't what Kenny wants at all. Even if Liverpool hadn't won a mere five times at Anfield in the league this season, he – like most of the other whingeing managers – evidently appreciates the perennial value of having people who can't answer back on whom to blame it all. Referees are a manager's most dependable lightning rod. They use the men in black as deflector shields, rerouting fan anger away from their unimpeachable personages and those of their players, and on to people who aren't in the business of exploiting thrice-weekly media platforms, and don't get paid millions for their trouble. Anyone rational knows it's nonsense. The role of skill is to eliminate luck from the equation, and the thought of a permanently rolling Warren commission feeding football's conspiracy theorists is too excruciating for words.