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"Premier League will use thicker lines to call marginal offside decisions with VAR next season, with the aim to give the attacker the benefit of the doubt"

Via SKY

Opinions?

Allowing different competitions to decide the thickness of the lines sounds minor but it's actually allowing different margins of error.  Offside in one competition won't be offside in another.  I can't see IFAB standing quietly on the sidelines without issuing a standard for long. 

However its done, Offside is still a binary thing - it is either offside or not offside and someone will still be called offside by "a toenail". 

So the moaning will not cease - unless, football introduces the equivalent of "umpire's call".  But for that, the ARs will have to make the "call" (as opposed to today's "wait and see" protocols" and - as long as it is within an agreed tolerance level- what they say goes.  It does mean that you could have two identical scenarios with one called offside and the other not, but that is what happens in cricket and they sort of accept that.  Might be a bit of a stretch for football though?

Agree totally.  This will change nothing.  Even if you say a player has to be two yards offside to be penalised, the 'pundits' will then start kicking off about the ones that are two yards and half an inch.  It matters precious little where you draw the line, it's the perception of it that needs to change.  The sooner everyone just accepts that some marginal calls will go for you and some against then these pointless conversations will stop.

Personally, I've always thought a far easier way of judging offside (and selling the decisions to the masses) would be just to use position of the feet.

What about only the part off the body you actually score with has to be i.e. score with a header your head must have been onside

It might not be the ‘scorer’ who is offside

So 20 goals that were correctly disallowed for offside last season would be allowed this season even though there has been no Law change.  That doesn't seem right to me.

So 20 goals that were correctly disallowed for offside last season would be allowed this season even though there has been no Law change.  That doesn't seem right to me.

I guess it depends what you mean by 'correctly'. The officials work to a particular process with the technology so the decisions will be 'correct' based on that. This seems to be allowing for fact technology is not 100% accurate and is in line with what has been allowed in other countries/competitions. I think the point where the arm is measured from for attacking offside has also become more generous to attackers.

On another note, UEFA have announced that VAR will be used in World Cup qualifiers from September, despite first three rounds being played without VAR in March. This seems a bit more debatable to me than it being used in some FA Cup games but not others as the games already played have a direct impact on the rest of the competition but the perception seems to be UEFA can do no wrong with VAR and everything about it is terrible in England so I doubt there will be many complaints.



edited to fix quote thingamajigga, bmb

Interesting video where Chris Kavanagh talks us through the process that VAR take

https://www.premierleague.com/video/single/2203778

Some more clips on the new VAR rules for this season.

This was by Jamie Carragher with Mike Riley, Michael Oliver and Anthony Taylor



The following links contain videos by Riley and Chris Kavanagh explaining the new rules:

https://www.premierleague.com/news/2204759

https://www.premierleague.com/news/2204756

Thanks very much for posting Greeny. I especially enjoyed the one with Carragher. I wonder if there will be a longer version shown on Sky at some point?
It is good to see a bigger media profile but the sad thing is there will probably be complete silence as soon as the season starts. Ideally they would do something like the weekly Video Review in MLS or at least a few things like the above at various points in the season. It seems they've moved to try and improve some big issues with VAR but I think lack of communication and clarification has been a major problem.