[Football] The "delaying the offside flag and letting it play out" thing

[Nobby Cybergoat]

The downside to this of course it will open the floodgates for the likes of Arsenal and Aston Villa to completely take the piss.

This is the problem. But you could have something like, any player who goes down during play or needs any treatment has to leave the pitch on a stretcher. Booking otherwise

 

[Nobby Cybergoat]

Agree. It was clearly offside.

If you give a match official a chance to shirk their responsibility to make a decision they will take it. Some of the decisions now are so painfully obviously onside yet the flag stays down.

The issue is potential injury yes. But one thing it's easy to forget when your watching the game, is that a player has a finite amount of energy and they are always having to make decisions about what is a good use of it and what isn't. Players are wasting their energy by having to do 40 yards sprints for passages of play which they know shouldn't exist. It's having an effect on what they can do in the next passage of play

 

[nickbrighton]

good luck to Awoniyi but this is all being wise after the event for me

there would be chaos if we conceded a goal because all our defenders stopped playing, as is natural after seeing the flag go up (like the one Shelvey scored for someone in a recent season)

except lots of people have been saying that it would happen ever since the rule came in, so it definitely isn't being wise after the event.
Thankfully these incidents are very rare, but had the flag gone up, it wouldn't have happened.

We have all moaned about seemingly obvious offsides that are allowed to continue, and then the flag is raised. The number of times the asst ref gets it wrong are minimal,.

If nothing else this will focus the discussion on whether this rule is worth the risk for the potential added goals. Im not sure myself, but Im coming down on the side of flagging if the ast ref thinks its offside.

 

[southstandandy]

I'm starting to question why we even have linesmen/women these days? Half the time when they flag they get it wrong, and when they don't we get situations like with the Forest player. Either use them properly or just have the ref and VAR only.

 

[nickbrighton]

I'm starting to question why we even have linesmen/women these days? Half the time when they flag they get it wrong, and when they don't we get situations like with the Forest player. Either use them properly or just have the ref and VAR only.

Im not sure they get it wrong that often , yes mistakes are going to happen, but I dont think its anywhere near 50%

 

[Redinpeace]

Feel so sorry for T, he’s had a poor season and suffered an awful injury, it’s hard to blame the girl running the line as she‘ll be under instruction but even Matz Sels in nets for Forest shouted offside and put his hand up,

With all the play acting and attempts to gain and unfair advantage I’d not officiate for all the tea in China.

Hope the big fella gets well very soon .

 

[Nobby Cybergoat]

except lots of people have been saying that it would happen ever since the rule came in, so it definitely isn't being wise after the event.
Thankfully these incidents are very rare, but had the flag gone up, it wouldn't have happened.

We have all moaned about seemingly obvious offsides that are allowed to continue, and then the flag is raised. The number of times the asst ref gets it wrong are minimal,.

If nothing else this will focus the discussion on whether this rule is worth the risk for the potential added goals. Im not sure myself, but Im coming down on the side of flagging if the ast ref thinks its offside.

Yes. This is definitely not being wise after the event

 

[Happy Exile]

While flagging late won’t always stop injuries it makes injuries more likely simply because it means defenders are often having to cover more ground with greater desperation than they’d normally have to if they were tracking a player who was legitimately onside. We’ve seen it ourselves recently with a player (Van Hecke?) colliding with Bart in a way that could have injured them both trying to stop a cross that never should have been made and wouldn’t have been possible had the opposition player been onside when he received the ball.

If one or both of them had been injured for an offside the entire stadium could see should have been flagged immediately we’d be rightly raging, and at the time Dunk made his feelings known to the officials.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

That's unfair. Internal injuries are frequently difficult to diagnose. He hits the post, he says it hurts, but then gets up and says he'll run it off. It's not like a broken leg where your foot's pointing the wrong way or a big cut that's bleeding all over the place. They'll go to some extent with how the player says he feels, and 99% of the time, impact injuries result in nothing but bruising.

If it's his spleen, or a lacerated liver, say then it will become more of an issue as time passes and it bleeds internally, whereby the pain will become worse, which is the point where they will start to go "hang on, this isn't normal" and start looking into it a bit deeper.

Didn't Shane Duffy have some sort of internal injury from football that left him requiring surgery? It vaguely rings a bell.

A friend of mine ruptured her spleen when she fell off her bike. She continued to cycle home and only became aware something was up many hours later and even then it was her boyfriend who noticed it, he said she was acting a bit strange, like she was drunk. She was taken to hospital and had it removed.

 

[hans kraay fan club]

I think that the officials are getting a bit of unfair criticism here.

Often fans / pundits are up in arms about a flag not going up when a player is 'MILES' offside - when the rules are pretty clear that a player is only to be considered as active (and thus potentially offside) if they impact the play. So the flag cannot go up until they actually make that move toward the ball - even if they were clearly miles behind the last defender earlier in the move.

And plenty of other times when fans / pundits are up in arms about the flag not going up for a player who is 'CLEARLY' offside - when the subsequent replays prove that it was actually incredibly close, and thus the assistant was completely correct to not flag.

You get incidents like this Forest one, where everyone is adamant that it was DEFINITELY offside - even apparently the Forest keeper at the other end of the pitch - and should have been immediately flagged. Yet if it really was THAT clear - that the play was DEFINITELY to be brought back - then why did Awoniyi continue to sprint forward to try to get the goal?

 

[Nobby Cybergoat]

Yet if it really was THAT clear - that the play was DEFINITELY to be brought back - then why did Awoniyi continue to sprint forward to try to get the goal?

Because he was doing what we was told to do all through his time as a child, then through various youth set ups and for his whole career as a senior pro ... play to the whistle?

 

[hans kraay fan club]

Because he was doing what we was told to do all through his time as a child, then through various youth set ups and for his whole career as a senior pro ... play to the whistle?

Sure - but you have a finite amount of energy to use during a game - so if you KNEW the play was going to be pulled back, why waste it?

The narrative from all those outraged, is that it was so obviously offside that everyone in the stadium KNEW it would be pulled back. The actions of Awoniyi and the covering defender suggest that isn't actually the case.

 

[Redinpeace]

even apparently the Forest keeper at the other end of the pitch

Sorry that was my poor attempt at humour, I was trying to highlight that it was obviously offside, I puffed my cheeks immediately as T looked miles off.

That aside hopefully Awoniyi will make a speedy recovery and the lino wont be affected by the outcome, the scrutiny there’re constantly under must make a hard job nigh on impossible.

 

[mejonaNO12 aka riskit]

except lots of people have been saying that it would happen ever since the rule came in, so it definitely isn't being wise after the event.
Thankfully these incidents are very rare, but had the flag gone up, it wouldn't have happened.

Exactly. It creates scenarios where players (because of how they learnt to play football for 20 years), are stopping to leave a player offside.

When the lino (I'm not blaming them btw) is forced to not put their flag up, it means you then have the defenders thinking "oh shit, he might actually be onside". They then have to SPRINT Back and the potential for desperate lunges etc are increased massively.

It was one of the first obvious issues with VAR. It has left assistant referees terrified to do their job.

 

[Nobby Cybergoat]

Sure - but you have a finite amount of energy to use during a game - so if you KNEW the play was going to be pulled back, why waste it?

The narrative from all those outraged, is that it was so obviously offside that everyone in the stadium KNEW it would be pulled back. The actions of Awoniyi and the covering defender suggest that isn't actually the case.

The players shouldn't have to officiate as well as play. Their job is to play to the whistle

The job of the officials here is to prevent pointless passages of play. If we had better officials, they would have the balls to flag for all but the really tight ones. We don't and we probably never will, they've been given a get out from doing their job, so they take it

 

[Nobby Cybergoat]

This could all be with the VAR thread, because if you get rid of that a side benefit would be the phantom passages of play would disappear and lino's would have to start flagging when they see an offside again.

 

[The Optimist]

Fair enough. Just feels like they makes that same mistake and awful lot

Maybe they haven’t. Maybe you think it was offside and it wasn’t and it’s your mistake not the lino’s.

 

[beardy gull]

Alan Shearer recently lamented the ridiculous late offside flag rule in the Villa PSG game. He went very quiet when the player was actually onside after all.

 

[Jim in the West]

I don't quite see what the injury has to do with the flag not going up... no other rule gets changed to make the injury more likely than if he had actually been onside

All you are saying is that injuries won't occur when football isn't being played - so if that's the aim then stop playing football altogether

Precisely - I really fail to see the logic of those that argue against the current rule. The injury would almost certainly have happened had the Forest player been onside. And why would you only stop play for a potential offside? Surely ANY significant debatable decision should require play to be stopped? eg: There's a potential foul in the box which the ref doesn't give....play continues, whilst VAR has a look. If VAR then advises it's a pen, the whole passage of play between the foul and the penalty decision is effectively "void" - whilst players risk getting injured.

 

[Deadly Danson]

This could all be with the VAR thread, because if you get rid of that a side benefit would be the phantom passages of play would disappear and lino's would have to start flagging when they see an offside again.

And thats the bottom line - no one has come up with a way for the situation to be resolved if we keep VAR - linos have to err on the side of caution and being totally accurate is virtually impossible so the choice is either a) continue as we are maybe trusting the lino to flag a touch more (which will make minimal difference) or b) bin VAR.