‘Crazy rule’ – Magnifying glasses and screams driving Stoke City hero up the wall

When I was a player, football felt like a simple game.

The rules were there and you could laugh when someone got the salt and pepper pots out to explain the offside law. It was a difficult life for a referee but at least you knew what you were moaning at them for!

It isn’t just the interpretation of offside that’s changed in the last few years but it isn’t just that nobody understands it anymore that is bugging me, it’s that nobody can understand why it has changed.

Does micro analysing whether a boot lace or an armpit hair is offside make the game fairer? Does it make it more exciting for supporters?

The things that we’ve seen over the past couple of weeks have been high farce.

On one hand we’re getting strikers who are 25 yards behind the defenders classed as not interfering, even if they go onto score goals in the next few moments.

On the other, we’re getting goals chalked off like Danny Ings’ against Aston Villa when it was pretty much his shadow which was over the line.

Magnifying glasses were pulled out to see if part of his shoulder was level on one side of the freeze frame – and on the other side, the ball was a blur with no real idea of when it had left the player’s foot to make the pass.

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There are checks for the sake of checking something, as if they have to justify their presence. It would be a blessing to go through a game when you’re just able to enjoy the football.

Even in the Championship without video technology there are issues thanks to these changes.

There were two incidents for Stoke City at Huddersfield at the weekend when Fraizer Campbell was standing on his own behind a high line and there was confusion about how far you let play go on before the linesman puts his flag up.

It has become a crazy, crazy rule and something bizarre seems to crop up every week.

You don’t know who’s actually in charge anymore. Is the man in black with the whistle or is there someone in his ear? Is it a team of analysts at Stockley Park?

I’m sure the experienced referees who have been doing the job for years are getting fed up with whispers in their ear questioning their calls, demanding replays and stopping the flow of the game.

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There has been talk about how VAR is used in other sports and, if it’s here to stay, whether they could bring in a rule only to review clear and obvious errors, rather than try to be 100 per cent accurate beyond the realms of current technology.

But I would just point to rugby league and rugby union and how you always know there that the referee is still in charge and the thinking is communicated to players, coaches and the people who pay to watch the game.

You can hear a referee on his microphone saying, ‘I just want to check I’ve got this right, can you just check the interference 25 yards out…’ or such forth. It’s not a mysterious power directing the referee like a puppet.

None of these ideas are new, it’s just that in the past we weren’t daft enough to try to pack them all in.

Football should be a game about opinion and magic, it’s not always clear and precise. You can show the same tackle to 10 people and five might think it’s a foul, five might think it’s brilliant.

What is particularly irritating me at the moment is the amount of screaming I’m hearing whenever there’s a challenge. It might be because matches are behind closed doors but there are yelps coming left, right and centre.

When two players bump into each other it’s the one who screams loudest and rolls furthest who gets the free-kick.

Long gone are the days when you would be utterly embarrassed to be called a diver. You would tick off opponents who tried to con the ref, you would have a go at your own teammates. A big part of the game now is trying to earn a foul.

If they are going to carry on making changes – and you can bet big money that they will – it would be nice if they involved changing it back to how it was when it didn’t need changing.

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THE team keeps changing at the top of the Premier League. A few have had a go already this season, whether it’s Leicester, Spurs, Liverpool or Manchester United.

There has been inconsistency with results and that’s meant that Man City have roared all the way up from nowhere as they’ve got on a march. I’m not even sure that we’ve seen Kevin de Bruyne or Raheem Sterling hit top form yet this season, although Phil Foden has looked bright.

There is no massive gap between one team or another and if someone gets their act together consistently, they can quickly rise up the table.

It’s the same in every division this season and there’s hope for Stoke, even if the gap has been getting bigger to the top six. It will take a crazy run at this stage – five wins on the bounce – but you should never give up in the Championship.