100%. It was so clearly offside I didn't even get my hopes up when he was looking to square the ball. Everyone knew.
As others have said, it was very clearly offside. But since when has “what the fans want” been a good basis on which to make refereeing decisions? [Apart from at Old Trafford, obviously]. Fans during a game are not evidence; they’re rabidly partisan, one-eyed, often ignorant of the laws…. They’ll swear on their Granny’s life that they saw something that they didn’t. If they think they can influence the ref, double all of the above.
Which is more important? A few thousand hobby herberts yelling at a ref that he’s wrong when he clearly isn’t (actually scrub that: even if he is), or a young professional athlete’s career…? Might sound dramatic, but they don’t put people in induced comas for a minor scratch.
Next time it could be a David Buust tackle that happens after an offside that isn’t given. Career-ending.
Besides, I’m not necessarily advocating putting the flag up instantly if it’s really close and you can’t tell (though the game was played like that for well over a century without undue harm). But when it’s obvious, like it was on Sat, the current guidance is stupid.
David Buust's leg was during the aftermath of a corner. Should we have scrapped corners after it happened?
If you accept the principle of letting play carry on sometimes when the linesman thinks it's offside, then it's just the margin you are arguing with and you are leaving it to the linesman's judgement of what is obviously offside rather than just offside.
Taiwo's injury isn't any better or worse than it would have been had he actually been able to score from that attack. It obviously makes the circumstance seem a bit more unfortunate but it doesn't actually make a difference. His job puts him at risk of injury - when he got twatted at a corner at Exeter, it wouldn't have made it worse if it should have been given as a goal kick.
I will concede the point Paul Anderson makes on the latest Forest Focus, namely that unflagged offsides are more likely to lead to one-on-ones with the goalkeeper, which may be circumstances that create a higher risk of injury (which was what I was probably driving at by talking about a greater risk), but that doesn't seem to be the situation here - if anything the presence of the Leicester defender made things worse.
Bearing in mind they are moving in opposite directions and it looks to me as if Anderson(?) has already played the ball, it's clearly not the 10 yards offside I've seen suggested elsewhere.
It's not really a toenail decision that needs to be made either, is it? Football worked perfectly well for a hundred years (or whatever), happy in the knowledge that everyone who had eyes, and half knew the game, knows that's offside. By miles. Even if they are partisan (comrade).
Or are we doing some kind of destabilised, black is white, sort of a thing here?
You will never really know the moment a ball leaves a players foot, and you will never capture that exact moment, in a perfect frame, with a perfect perspective...so there will always be errors (more than a toenail), as I've been saying all along. That's not the point. That was offside, and everyone knew it. Everyone. The problem is that the laws an ass. Not what is offside or not, and what you do in marginal cases.
He was off.
Whilst there is clearly an issue with flagging offside more promptly, the other thing is the on-field assessment, for which our medical staff are getting panned. I'm not sure that’s entirely fair. I suspect they first wanted to rule out concussion and did not realise the severity of the abdominal injury which can take longer.
What’s overlooked as a precipitant is this substitution window restriction. The assessment was rushed and he was sent back on, which probably exacerbated his intestinal injury*, because we were about to use the last of our sub windows. That’s totally crazy. Why can’t the “concussion window” be expanded to include serious injury? It’s the refs decision in consultation with medical staff; it’s quite difficult to fake a serious injury and if you’re substituted under that rule, you are automatically sidelined for, say, a minimum of 2 weeks.
(*having checked my medical textbooks, “running around in front of 30,000 people in a high-stakes derby” was not on the list of treatment for intestinal perforation).
The real problem is that football is taken far too seriously, for the sake of rich owners, TV companies and gamblers. There is no need for every decision to be microscopically accurate, that isn't the essence of the rules anyway, there isn't even any need for every decision to be right. It's just a game, some fun on a Saturday afternoon.
There are some comments about the nature of the injury and the difficulties diagnosing it, especially in the context of a football match, from a consultant colorectal surgeon at the bottom of this article on the BC page, which also thankfully says he has come out of the induced coma:
You may, or may not, recall that I have long advocated the only real solution to these injury and concussion problems, allied to keeping the game moving.
Match day squad with rolling subs. If you want to keep the attritional aspects of the game prominent, make the allowed squad small. If you want to maximise optimal athleticism, make the squad size larger. But the point is that you don't stop the game for treatment of players, you don't stop the game for injury at all. you remove the player from the field of play, and replace them with a new one. Then you can complete whatever injury protocol that you need to.
Everyone knew serious injury from dead play was coming...and indeed it's not the first (Pickford>Van Dijk), and nor will it be the last. Saying that injury could happen in play anyway is a total red herring for me....it would at least be injury in the pursuit of something more meaningful, and also statistically less likely anyway because the most broken/destabilised situations in football occur when one player has an unfair head start and defenders are trying to get back on terms.
Talk about missing the point! There’s always a risk of injury in any sport. The point with this, however, is that it was un-necessary risk because the ball should have been dead. I cited the Buust injury purely to illustrate that the risk can be career-ending - claiming that I think we should scrap corners as a result is just bollocks.
As Tricky says, the game wobbled along well enough for a century with offside as it was - and yes, occasionally they got it wrong.
I’ve read people this morning saying that since the “leave offsides to VAR” directive (which is essentially what it means) 99.8% of offside decisions have been correct… as though that trumps everything. It doesn’t.
Taiwo was injured in a passage of play that could - I would say should - never have taken place, because the officials should have stopped the game several seconds before he even attempted to attack the ball.
Presumably they prefer leeches?
[Totally agree re expanding the “concussion” thing]
Nuno nominated for manager of the season; Gibbs-White and Wood for player of the season (Morgan isn't in my top 3 for Forest's player of the season).
and Elanga for young player
Salah will win player of the season. Slot manager (although Nuno should if we get back into the champions league). Young player seems pitched far too old and I've no idea who will win that (Gravenberch?).
I think Nuno will get it even if we don't get CL. Liverpool were supposed to be a title contender, the fact that the rest of them had varying degrees of off years (or in Arsenal's case continue to be a paper tiger) isn't down to Slot. We were not supposed to be anything like as good as we have been and the fact that we have is pretty much all down to Nuno.
I am hearing that filming for the launch of next season's kit is taking place next week.
