Whitey Grandad

And they are miles away from the action and looking at the game through blurry off-axis pictures.

But will we still be top at the end of the season?

You can with enough practice. You can switch from one to the other quicker than a camera can take another frame.

They aren’t middle-aged and they aren’t all men. These are highly-trained and experienced officials that you’re talking about. They have to meet very stringent fitness tests. More importantly they are in the perfect position being right on the sideline and level with the second-last defender. It is very rare that a VAR camera is looking square across the pitch.

Arms don’t count.

Precisely

The problem is that the technology is not accurate enough to judge whether or not an attacker is an inch offside.

Ah, that great pagan festival Eostre.

General Blasphemy? Wasn’t he in the Salvation Army?

Always sad to see a great talent pass over. I lived his work and I even have a Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band record somewhere, probably ‘The Intro and the Outro’. Their album ‘Gorilla’ was all the rage in my teenage years.

Bob Marley? I thought he was dead

We got lucky with Djenepo’s ‘handball’ in the buildup to Ings’s goal a couple of weeks ago.

Based on my judgment on the technical methods that are used. In an earlier life I was a senior engineer in television picture processing and have written and presented several technical papers to international television conferences. You must always remember that what you think you see in your living room is an illusion created by flickering coloured pixels. It gives a general impression of what took place. My figure of 50cm is what I suggest should be the ‘margin of allowance’.

You cannot make a subjective decision through a television lens. The PL and the others are all in the pay of the TV companies. They have ceased to be spectators and want to control the game as well.

But cricket, tennis, rugby are spasmodic games which have regular stoppages. What separates football is the relentless pace of the game, the ebb and flow. Unless Saints are playing at home, of course.

Says anyone who has actually looked at them. Most of the marginal offsides to start with but that Arsenal goal that was disallowed because Chambers is supposed to have fouled somebody is a clear injustice. , widely recognised as such throughout the game,

Yes, it is claiming to be accurate but it isn’t. I would put the margin of error at more like 50cm than 15cm myself.

Yes, I will continue to argue about that. And unless you have been out in the middle during a game you skill never understand this. Have you?

I agree. There is too much faith in technology and many people don’t understand the need to allow for the margin of error in any measuring system.

Yes, for some, but not for everybody.

You obviously haven’t seen the Liverpool Wolves game earlier today. Not every decision has been correct, especially the offside ones where several have been ridiculous. Apparently the fuss about handball today was that earlier in the Lallana/Mané move the ball is said to have hit VVD in the arm but this was ‘too soon in the move’.

I take the opposite view. The beauty of the Beautiful Game is that it has ebb and flow, that it is possible for a ball to be cleared off the line one moment and then the team can run down the other end and score, This is what makes the game special. It’s not cricket, doncha know.

Surely you have to admit that there was very little about Christianity over the past few weeks? Almost entirely commercialism and conspicuous consumption as far as I could see.

It takes a lot longer than 30 seconds or a minute.

Let’s see how he does against Huddersfield.