Whitey Grandad

It doesn’t have to. There are times when you’ve just got to clear the current danger and if we have forwards who are alive to it then it puts pressure back on the opposition further up the field. If it becomes obvious that aerial balls are not getting them anywhere then they stop doing them. Not only that, when you have someone like Stephens who won’t head the ball then the opposition will stick some big lump up against hi. ‘A commanding centre half’ is what I want, I suppose. Perhaps I should have said ‘capable of clearing the ball past the halfway line’.

I’ve never heard of him, to be honest, but that means nothing

A proper, old-fashioned centre-half. Someone who can win a header and clear the ball past the halfway line.

Good for all sides.

Hamstrings are normally quicker than that. Six to eight weeks.

Ford were not "given money". They had to borrow it like everybody else. Honda would always say that in public, that is the Japanese way. Privately they are seething.

Thanks, you have expressed it clearer than me.

Why? Is he injured again and not fit enough to walk?

There are a number of points there. AI can never establish offside accurately and I speak as someone who has spent a lot of time in image processing and missile tracking. Besides, it's not needed. The importance of the result is an irrelevance. Football is a sport and once you let money take over you have besmirched it.

Technology will never be that accurate for offside. Of course referees can occasionally make a wrong decision but in my view regarding offside anything within a foot or so is the best that you can expect. Once it gets to the stage of taking minutes of microscopic examination of a blurry image before you can toss a coin and get an answer then we're going up the wrong road. Don't forget that a lot of signal processing has taken place between the camera sensor and the viewing screen. (I used to be heavily involved in television research in an earlier life). Gabbi's disallowed goal at Wembley is a good case for VAR where a quick message to the referee within a few seconds was all that was needed and would not have disrupted the game. Using it for penalty decisions or fouls is not appropriate. There is a more general principle which some will not agree with that the laws of football should apply consistently across all levels of the game.

Of course it's imprecise. If the attacker is on one side of the pitch and the defender is on the other and the camera's position is not dead square then you haven't a hope in hell of getting a correct decision on a tight call. No amount of computer-generated lines is going to help you. The offside law was not written to be interpreted by a computer game. It needs a rapid, on the pitch decision in order to keep the game flowing. VAR is a sledgehammer to crack a puff of smoke.

Im out of the country so I claim a Wenger and say that I haven’t seen that particular incident, but fouls are almost impossible to determine on a TV screen.

You’d be amazed at what you can see if your position is correct. The amount that a player moves within the fraction of a second that it takes is minimal. As I have said before, it’s not a precise law and with the best instrumentation in the world it never will be.

I don't think that four linos would be a problem but you end up having different arrangements for different levels of football. Almost all referees 'run rights', that is the linesmen run alongside the left back and the referee runs along a diagonal so as to cover the unattended corners and keep most of the action between the referee and his assistant. Regarding Gabbi's disallowed goal it would have been obvious to the referee that he was onside but at this level the referees tend to take the assistant's decision without question. At the level of football that I used to supervise there usually weren't any assistants and those that there were could not always be relied upon. You could end up keeping an eye on them as much as the players.

That's not the way it works. The assistant on the line (let's call him lino) has to keep him/herself stationed level with the second -last defender at all times. This is not easy for the untrained and means shuffling up and down the line like a crab. Then when the ball is kicked it is a quick check to see whether the attacker is in an offside position. The difficulties arise in a fast-moving game when players are moving in opposite directions but quite frankly if you need a freeze-frame then it's takings pedantry a bit far.

"there was contact" That has nothing do do with whether or not it was a penalty.

I can live with that cup final. We have to remember that everything else that went on in that match would also have been subject to review and somehow I don’t think that Saints would have benefited. What I would like to see is a more sensible link-up between the referee and his assistants. As a referee you have a pretty good idea whether somebody is offside or not. A quick confer there and the goal would have stood. Certainly if I had been reffing it

Very true. Just imagine that load of crâp with endless stops for VAR reviews.

None of them improve the game. Football depends on continuous free movement for its unique appeal. The fact that the ball can be cleared off the line at one end and then a few seconds later it's in the other net is what makes it special. Every other sport is a turgid dirge.

When the offside law was written it wasn't intended or expected that it would be implemented by someone sitting miles away whose viewpoint wasn't actually at normal eye height and level with the second-class defender and who was watching some coloured pixels on a distorted freeze-frame screen. It was only ever an approximate law.

I'm very pleased that I had the chance to go. Let's hope for many more such trips.

That in itself should worry you. Effectively it would mean that different leagues are operating under different laws Hi Pete!

Restaurant tables that don't sit flat on the floor and have to be wedged with beer mats.

That's not what I typed! (and I did check at the time) Add auto-correct to the list of small things that annoy me.

Any idea when that would be?