I know that this blog has become less of a Manchester United blog and more of a TV Replay forum in recent days but as we are into another International Break and Manchester United news is at a premium, I just thought I would take the opportunity to cover certain aspects of this controversial subject.

The offside rule is one of the most misunderstood rules in football and the fact that the rule seems to change slightly every other season doesn’t help matters.

In a nutshell, a player is in an offside position if he is in the opponents half of the field and in front of the last defender (thus gaining an advantage) at the moment when the ball is played towards him by one of his own players.

It’s a little more detailed than that but for the purposes of this article, that’s enough.

So, when deciding if a player is offside or not, the assistant referee has to have his eye on three things all at the same time:-

1. The position of the attacker.
2. The position of the defender.
3. The player who is about to play the ball forward.

When you realise that there is likely to be more than one defender to watch and possibly more than one attacker to watch, you can see how the problem is compounded.

So, he watches the player with the ball and the split second when the ball is played, he has to look again at the positions of the attackers and defenders and make a judgement.

It is very difficult for him to have a snapshot in his mind of the precise state of play when the ball is played and the further back the player making the pass is from the attackers, the harder it becomes (probably physically impossible, actually) for the assistant referee to take it all in.

The above example also assumes that the attackers and defenders are all static but this is never the case. The defenders will normally be pushing out and the attacker will normally be moving either along the line or pushing forward. The picture is constantly shifting.

Throw into the mix such further complications like whether or not a player is “active” and we have a scenario where one man has an awful lot to process and then make an instant decision.

With the best will in the world and the best assistant referee in the world, I cannot see how we are looking at anything more than a “best guess” scenario here.

A few years ago, the assistant referees were told to give the attacker the benefit of any doubt and only flag offside if there was clear “daylight” between them and the defenders.

This has been dropped now and it almost seems like the reverse is in operation.

I have to laugh when watching games on TV when at half-time or full time we find the pundits scrutinising tv replays in slow motion and often freeze frame and zoomed in to see if a defender’s trailing leg was playing the attacker onside.

This is all well and good but there is no way that at normal speed and at normal distance with just one pair of eyes and with so many other things to take into account, an assistant referee can be expected to see this kind of thing.

So, here’s how I would like TV replays to be used during the game.

When a player is clearly offside, the assistant flags him offside just as he is doing now. We won’t need a replay in the vast majority of cases.

But where there is any element of doubt in the assistant’s mind and he cannot say for absolute certain that at the point the ball was played forward that the attacker was clearly offside, the benefit of the doubt goes with the attacker.

At this point, the assistant referee pushes a button which signals to the TV Replay official that he wants the offside decision to be clarified.

In the meantime, the attacking player is breaking forward and from here, several things can happen but it basically it boils down to: he scores or he doesn’t.

If he doesn’t score and the ball goes out for a goal-kick or the keeper makes the save then the defending team has possession and we just play on. No harm done and everyones heart-rate has just been increased a notch – great stuff – better than a dodgy offisde flag which just annoys and frustrates half the crowd, the players and the manager.

However, if he does score then we get the verdict from the TV Replay official on the initial offside decision.

If the goal is declared good, great. If it was offside then we just go back to where the offside decision was made and the defending team take their free kick.

This might seem pretty cruel to let the striker and all the fans believe that he has scored when the decision is still being made behind the scenes about whether the goal should stand or not but I still believe that this system is better than flagging him offside wrongly and not even giving the attacker every opportunity to score.

In any case, we already have situations where a player scores a goal and is halfway through his celebratory routine before he realises that the linesman has been holding up his flag all the while.

I am also pretty sure that strikers would prefer to be given every opportunity to do their thing than to be flagged offside and called back before they have even got into stride. Especially when they later see on replays that they weren’t even offside.

As with all use of TV Replay evidence, speed is the key. We don’t want to be sitting around for minutes on end while every angle is scrutinised and if a decision is so touch and go that even a slow-motion replay cannot immediately and conclusively provide the answer then, again, I think we should be giving the attacker the benefit of the doubt.

I’m getting carried away with myself for dramatic effect here but at the point the ball hits the back of the net, a voice could come over the speakers, “TV Replay Decision!”

The players stop, the crowd holds its breath… the decision is announced. Half the crowd go crazy or breathe a sigh of relief and half hold their heads.

It’s all fair, there is no injustice and it doesn’t have to mean that football loses its drama, sponteniety and human element.

Of course, the examples I have given here are simplistic and assume that the attacker will head straight for goal and shoot.

This won’t always happen and following the initial “offside” incident, the attacker might decide to hold up the ball and wait a second for support, there might be a few tackles as the defenders get back and all kinds of other things but at this point, we can all just assume that the game has “played on” and the initial offside decision is irrelevant and the TV Replay doesn’t matter even if the passage of play results in a goal.

Remember, we are talking about a decision that was almost impossible to call one way or the other in the first place and all we are doing here is allowing every chance for the correct decision to be made.

We can argue all day long about whether this would improve the game or make it worse but I maintain that until we give it a trial, we won’t know for certain one way or the other.

P.S. It doesn’t have to be trialled in something as major as the Premier League or the Champions League. What about International Friendlies? What about those Mickey Mouse “tournaments” that are held during the summer? (No, I don’t mean the World Cup! I mean the Audi Cup and that kind of thing).