Daniel Storey: Football can't allow farcical handball situation to fester
Referee Peter Bankes checks the VAR pitch side monitor before giving a penalty for a handball against Tottenham Hotspur's Eric Dier. Picture: Andrew Boyers/NMC Pool/PA Wire.
You cannot accuse Roy Hodgson of being one-eyed. When his Crystal Palace team were awarded a penalty for handball against Manchester United last week, Hodgson insisted that he longed for “the simple version of handball”. This weekend it was Palace who were the victims of a nonsensical law change. Hodgson was fuming.
Twenty-four hours later Jose Mourinho took on the mantle.
But Hodgson is right. There is no other sport in which ‘scores’ matter so much as football, with a usual average of under three per game.
There is nothing that gives team’s a more presentable opportunity to score than being awarded a penalty. So to penalise a team so severely for an incident where a ball strikes an arm that is almost by the side of the body from three yards away and struck at pace is dim-witted. What else could Joel Ward do but stand in a natural position to defend?
We risk allowing a farcical situation to fester. The current handball laws render the notion of deliberate action almost obsolete. Showing replays in super-slow-motion creates a sense of guilt that is entirely absent at full-speed. Before long, sensible managers will instruct players to aim for the hand as a percentage play to win a penalty.
Frank Lampard understandably talked up the resolve of his Chelsea players for the manner of their comeback against West Brom, but he must understand that expectations have shifted. Chelsea with a transfer ban and post the loss of their best attacking player were plucky top-four challengers. Chelsea after a £220m summer spend must mount a significant title challenge. In that context, drawing to a newly-promoted team will provoke criticism not praise.
The handbrake on Chelsea’s progress last season was their patchy defensive record. No team in the top half conceded more league goals. Chelsea repeatedly looked exposed when counter-attacked, over-committing players in a bid to break down obdurate defences.
At the Hawthorns on Saturday, there was evidence that things are getting worse not better.
It’s not hard to identify the issue. Lampard gives his full-backs licence to push high up the pitch but also started four attacking players in Timo Werner, Tammy Abraham, Kai Havertz and Mason Mount. In the first half, they regularly had six or seven players in the final third of the pitch.
That might work if you have two speedy central defenders to snuff out danger on the break, but Thiago Silva and Andreas Christensen are not those defenders.
Signing a 36-year-old to play that role is at best optimistic and at worse bizarrely naive. Lampard must either switch to three at the back to give Chelsea extra protection or ask his full-backs to stay deeper and let the wide forwards provide the overlaps. Better teams than West Brom will not let a three-goal lead slip.
Patrick Bamford came into this season under some pressure.
Leeds United broke their transfer record to sign Rodrigo from Valencia. Most of us expected him to eventually take Bamford’s place after an initial acclimatisation period. Bamford has history against him. The biggest issue in his career has been chance conversion.
Last season, his shot-to-goals conversion was 11.2%. Leeds couldn’t afford that to continue in the top flight.
But Bamford is having some fun. He scored the winner against Sheffield United with a header directed well away from Aaron Ramsdale’s reach and now has a shot conversion rate of 42%. Even if that will drop back towards the median in the next few weeks, Bamford has made himself undroppable. Good on him for that.
A win’s a win, particularly when you are still trying to improve the squad over the early weeks of the season, but Manchester United will never be as lucky again in 2020/21 as they were against Brighton. Graham Potter’s side hit the woodwork five times, could easily have had a second penalty and were broken by a handball decision that came after the full-time whistle had blown.
It’s hard to see what United are doing on the training ground.
They have an excellent group of attacking players but were outplayed by a Brighton side that understood the benefit of countering at pace and playing direct balls for Aaron Connolly and Leandro Trossard to chase.
Time and again United allowed Brighton to cross the ball deep to the far post and never appeared able or willing to solve the issue until they were eventually punished. For all the talk of Jadon Sancho, United must either buy better defenders or protect their pedestrian centre-backs better. On this evidence, a forward line of Harry Kane, Son Heung-Min and Gareth Bale could run riot next weekend.
