Anyone who didn’t know it before will now – after the Manchester derby – realise that the current offside law is an absolute bin fire.
‘A player in an offside position at the moment the ball is played or touched by a team-mate is only penalised on becoming involved in active play by interfering with play by playing or touching a ball passed or touched by a team-mate, or interfering with an opponent by preventing an opponent from playing or being able to play the ball by clearly obstructing the opponent’s line of vision, or challenging an opponent for the ball or clearly attempting to play a ball which is close when this action...
The decision on Saturday is especially ironic because the VAR has been ruling out perfectly good goals for micro-offside decisions where the offside player couldn’t possibly have gained any advantage from an elbow, or a shoulder, or a toe being ahead of the ball and yet when a player is running in on goal with the ball at his feet, shielding it from defenders, somehow there’s no advantage being gained in doing that. It makes no sense.
JohnnyTheNic At the end of the day Johnny, everyone had to abide by referee Fernandes’ decision, including assistant Cann, who put his flag straight down
JohnnyTheNic In defence of the offside law - its a mess - and VAR this one is down to inept refereeing. The one acceptable reason for an onside call here is blindness…and if you saw TAA get flagged offside for shepherding a deflected shot to the corner flag at Brighton it’s even more bizarre
JohnnyTheNic An “educational” weekend in the Premier League…the Manchester derby brought new obfuscation on the offside rule when common sense and logic took a leave…but at least the right lesson came out of Mitrovic’s disallowed double-kick penalty in the Newcastle - Fulham game..
JohnnyTheNic At this point id take it right back to basics, anyone in an offside position its off. With VAR that would be 100% fair with no room for interpretation.
JohnnyTheNic It's a classic of solving one problem and creating another
JohnnyTheNic Usually after something controversial you see a mix of views in the press and on twitter but I've not yet seen one person make a case for why that goal was allowed to stand