What is going on with offside, and can it be fixed?

Maybe it was all very predictable. After being enraged by their disallowed goal at Manchester City before the international break, Liverpool got stung again by the confusing subjective offside law.

Was Dan Ndoye impacting Alisson when Murillo gave Nottingham Forest the lead at Anfield? You can make an argument for it, after all he was stood in front of the goalkeeper and the ball went past him. But, like at Manchester City two weeks ago, the video assistant referee (VAR) let the on-field decision stand.

In one game, Liverpool have a goal disallowed. In the other, Liverpool concede a goal. It has got to sting.

We’ve been here before, and we’ll be here again. And while it might not seem like it right now, discussions about subjective offside decisions are not a new thing.

You only have to look at the Laws of the Game from 1903-04, which says that a player in an offside position must not «in any way whatsoever interfere with an opponent or with the play until the ball has been again played.»

Fast forward 122 years, and we are still making subjective judgements about a player in an offside position who does not touch the ball.

Tottenham had more reason to feel aggrieved in their 4-1 loss at Arsenal on Sunday.

When Eberechi Eze scored the Gunners’ second goal, Bukayo Saka, Martin Zubimendi and Leandro Trossard were all in an offside position in front of the Spurs goalkeeper, but the goal stood.

«I think this is preventing an opponent from being able to play the ball by clearly obstructing the line of vision,» Joe Hart said on Match of the Day. «As it leaves his foot, Trossard is in [Guglielmo] Vicario’s line of vision. Offside in my opinion.»

And that is the problem, it is one person’s opinion and others can make a valid case the other way.

The key consideration for the VAR is that the offside players are moving away from the play, and the goalkeeper can see the ball at the time of the shot.

For many fans it feels like it should be offside. Supporters want just decisions, but VAR has never really been about that. It is about checking the validity of the on-field decision.

«Two of those goals were given,» Hart said of the goals scored by Nottingham Forest and Arsenal. «So it makes it very difficult and we have these continual conversations, but with VAR the ability they’ve got is to slow it down and pause it, and you can point out why the goal should be ruled out.»

At what point is the threshold crossed for a player making a clear impact on the goalkeeper? The only way you could end these discussions is to make a decision objective, but we should be wary of unintended consequences.

Would we get more consistent decisions? No doubt, but as we have seen with the handball law if you add more absolutes that simply results in more disallowed goals.

How about saying that a player being offside in the six-yard box always has to be impacting a goalkeeper? You would still have shades of grey and potentially goals disallowed which are against the spirit of the law.

If the offside player is at the opposite side of the goal to the keeper, would we really want a goal to be ruled out? If you are being objective, it would have to be.

That does not feel like a road we would want to go down, which leaves us still with a subjective conundrum.

VARs are told not to get involved in subjective offside unless a clear error has been made either way. This is why interventions are quite rare, and the borderline decisions like Andy Robertson at Manchester City cause most controversy.

Last season, there were only two VAR interventions on line of vision, and they both resulted in disallowed goals being awarded: Bernardo Silva for Manchester City at Wolves and Jamie Vardy for Leicester at Fulham.

In 2023-24, four goals were disallowed for the offence: Rasmus Hojlund for Manchester United at Burnley, Mohamed Salah for Liverpool at Burnley, Lorenz Assignon for Burnley at Crystal Palace and Tawanda Chirewa for Wolves against West Ham.

Supporters will understandably use these for comparison but while two decisions can be similar they will never be exactly the same. For that reason, we will always have perceived inconsistencies.