Just watched the ‘highlights’ of the Manchester derby, would have preferred a 0-0 draw with a bunch of red cards but it wasn’t much of a contest, Haaland should probably have had 3 or 4 but he did add a couple to his customary stat padding against relegation fodder.
You of all people, @redfanman! You were the chosen one! (If anything, you should have remembered Austin Butler’s scene with one of my life’s greatest loves, Lea Seydoux).
However, despite him then putting himself between James and the flight of the ball and trying but missing to flick it, VAR deemed that it did not interfere with James’ ability to play the ball so was not offside.
If this is not offside then the rule isn’t fit for purpose. It’s all just so utterly stupid the way the authorities write guidance to help the refs apply these rules that so over complicate what should be an easy decision (once you’ve done the hard bit and identified he was in an offside position) to make the rule end up doing the opposite of what it was intended to do.
Continuing from what Limie mentions , a lot of Arsenal’s setpiece shithousery will just disappear if the referees just do the basic job of flagging Arsenal’s keeper blocker as being in an offside position.