What is going on with offside, and can it be fixed?

At what point is the threshold crossed for a player making a clear impact on the goalkeeper? The only way to end these debates is to make an objective decision, but we must be wary of unintended consequences.

Can we make more consistent decisions? There is no doubt that, as we see in the handball law, if you add more absolutes it results in more disallowed goals.

How about saying that a player who is offside inside the six yard area must always influence the goalkeeper? You will still have shades of gray and potentially impermissible goals that are against the spirit of the law.

If the offside player is on the opposite side of the goalkeeper, do we really want the goal to be disallowed? If you are objective, it should be so.

This doesn’t sound like a path we want to go down, which still leaves us with a subjective dilemma.

VARs have been told not to interfere with subjective offside unless a clear mistake has been made in either case. Interventions are therefore extremely rare and borderline decisions, such as those made by Andy Robertson at Manchester City, cause the most controversy.

Last season, there were only two VAR interventions in the line of sight and both resulted in disallowed goals: Bernardo Silva for Manchester City at Wolves and Jamie Vardy for Leicester at Fulham.

Four goals have been disallowed for offense in 2023-24: Rasmus Hojlund for Manchester United at Burnley, Mohamed Salah for Liverpool at Burnley, Lorenz Assignon for Burnley at Crystal Palace and Tawanda Chirewa for Wolves against West Ham.

Supporters will understandably use these for comparison, but although two decisions may be similar, they will never be exactly the same. Therefore we will always perceive inconsistencies.