Premier League Talking Points: Offside law an absolute bin fire. No-one really knows what it means
RIGHT DECISION? Manchester United's Bruno Fernandes celebrates after scoring his side's first goal. Pic: AP Photo/Dave Thompson
In the first half on Sunday in North London, Tottenham were second to everything, seemed slow, disorganised and completely outclassed.
They simply couldn’t compete with sharp and sparky Arsenal who absolutely battered them. Hugo Lloris put one in his own net seemingly shocked by a ball being struck at him and deflected it in. A bizarre goal. Is it time to replace him? Spurs have now conceded the first goal in 15 out of the last 20 games they’ve played. It wasn’t far short of humiliation as Martin Ødegaard drilled in a second from outside the box, completely unchallenged and Thomas Partey powered one onto the bar. At half-time the question was would Tottenham do their usual trick of transforming into a good team in the second half? Of course they did. So much so that they appeared to be an entirely different team, now playing with width and freedom. Ramsdale made a series of excellent saves and was a very safe pair of hands all afternoon. He made the difference. Some teams would’ve wilted under the Spurs pressure but this Arsenal team is made of stern stuff, stood firm and resolute and won their 15th out of 18 games. While Spurs' schizophrenia remains a huge problem and they’ve now lost four of the last five home games, this was a big test for the Gunners and one they passed with flying colours. Manchester United next for them, then City in the Cup. You wouldn’t back against them to pass those tests too.
While Leeds went down to another loss at Aston Villa, they were easily the better side and with a returning Patrick Bamford scoring the sort of striker's goal that no-one else at the club seems to be able to score, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Gnonto really excites. A summer arrival from Zurich and costing somewhere around four million pounds, at just 19 years old, the Italian plays mature football far beyond his years. Playing wide on the left most of the time, he ran rings around the Villa defence, with wonderful close ball control, all-energy direct running, a low centre of gravity and some impressive physical power. Having made just seven appearances so far and only completing 90 minutes three times, he’s still very new to opposition defences and Villa certainly did not know how to handle him. He’s already scored a goal and made an assist and looks the real deal. With the promise of Hoffenheim striker Georginio Rutter arriving in this transfer window and Bamford returning, sooner or later, Leeds seem likely to start winning games playing this kind of progressive and enjoyable sort of football. Certainly they have a real star on their books in Gnonto.
For the first time in a while we can say with some conviction that Man Utd are back. They are transformed by Erik ten Hag. The 2-1 beating of Man City was the Red Devils' ninth consecutive win and Marcus Rashford’s ninth consecutive home goal - a new record. The game hinged on a contentious first goal for United allowing them to equalise, but something has gone awry with the men from the Etihad. It was their second defeat of the week and a fourth game in all competitions without a goal from Erling Haaland who looked curiously absent from most of the action and fluffed the one chance he did have. This may be a blip, but United are now only one point behind them and playing with a level of confidence that seems to have deserted City. Some, myself included, felt changing how they play to accommodate Haaland may have an effect on the team and while it hasn’t looked that way until now, they do suddenly look rather flat and ordinary and Kevin De Bruyne seems to have fallen out of love with the ball for the first time in his City career.
When Marcus Rashford ran onto a through ball, he was offside, he probably knew he was offside, certainly Bruno Fernandes knew he was offside and was yelling this fact to his partner. Rashford shepherded the ball, not touching it, just looking after it until Fernandes arrived to strike it into the net. Was Rashford interfering with play? He didn’t touch the ball, but he was bearing down on goal and everyone in the City defence was certainly paying close attention to him. He could not, in all honesty, have been interfering with play when he was bearing down on the goal with the ball at his feet. Whether the officials got this call right, whether the VAR got it right, depends on your interpretation of the offside law. It didn’t feel right, but that’s not worth much these days. This was a typical example when no amount of slow motion replays scrutinised by the VAR could offer any accurate guidance because the offside law is an absolute bin fire and no-one really knows what it means. In the end the on-field officials made a decision, right or wrong. And that’s exactly how it should be.
Brighton were superb from the first minute and deserved their first top-flight win against Liverpool, a Liverpool side that looks stagnant, broken and leaden-footed. Wave after wave of Brighton attacks just beat Liverpool into submission, the way Liverpool used to do to teams. The Seagulls have scored 20 times in seven games. Since the World Cup, apparently no side in the top five leagues in Europe has scored more goals in all competitions than Brighton. But Liverpool have lost the intensity that was once second nature to them.
They desperately need two things - a young, all-action, run-all-day, defensive midfielder to stop them from being so easily opened up and a change of tactics. They are trying to play the counter-attacking game that won them to the title, but can no longer do it so successfully. The stats don’t lie. They managed just two shots on Brighton’s goal, had 39% possession and won just one corner. Klopp needs to make some hard and radical decisions if he’s to give Liverpool even a chance of finishing in the top four. Right now it seems highly unlikely.
Trouble is brewing at Goodison Park. Threats to the board of directors were such that the police told them to stay away. At the final whistle, the boos were loud and long but interestingly, Frank Lampard doesn’t seem to be getting much flack for the team being second bottom, even though he must be implicated in how the players look so brittle and so incapable of dealing with any in-game adversity. Is Sean Dyche the answer as some are calling for? The stats suggest they were competitive with the Saints, but once the equaliser was scored, there was only going to be one winner and it wasn’t the Toffees. Everton have now won just one home game since September. That is a shockingly poor statistic. No wonder the home crowd is toxic and a post-game sit-in was held on Saturday. All the more remarkable then that their only point since November 5th was against Man City.
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