Absurd offside laws can’t hide the shifting sands in Manchester Jonathan Wilson

A The forward makes a run for the through-ball. The defender steps up. The ball is played and the forward is in an offside position. The forward follows the ball, chasing it, escorting it. Something in his head—perhaps Bruno Fernandes screaming—warns him that he might be offside and so he allows another forward (let’s call him “Bruno Fernandes”) to sweep the ball into the net. Is that forward offside?

He did not touch the ball but can it be assumed that he did not interfere? Doesn’t his presence stop the initial defender from charging back and trying to hook the ball? This is the kind of question that could occupy medieval theologians for a lifetime. Dons Scotus and Thomas Aquinas wrote controversial tracts on it, then those tracts were analyzed and the analyzes themselves were analyzed. Entire libraries were devoted to the subject. To what extent, if God is omniscient, can we have free will? If our thinking is flawed, can any light escape the flaw? What is intervention?

What we got at Old Trafford was a brief exchange between assistant referees Darren Cann and Stuart Atwell. It was all respectfully traditional. No use of mics and headsets, no use of VAR monitors, just two middle-aged men looking worried and talking behind their hands, occasionally shaking their heads. It could have been Ray Tinkler and Bill Troup who decided West Brom’s Colin Suggett had not interfered and torpedoed Leeds’ title chances at Elland Road in 1971 (Arsenal were still the indirect beneficiaries then). Then, a final nod, and Atwell, dramatically, his habitually disturbed features taking a decisive aspect, pointed to the centre-circle.

This is a moment that could be pivotal – in the history of the title race Manchester United and Manchester City. Under the law as it stands, it may be the right decision, but modern offside law is a mess. Everything about Manuel Akanji’s positioning and decision-making was conditional on what Marcus Rashford did. This may make it easier to judge whether a player is effectively on-offside by interpreting interference as touching the ball, but that does not mean it is correct. Rashford essentially played the longest dummy in history.

Four minutes later, United scored a second goal from a ball played behind the defensive line. Despite their recent form, the defeat confirmed City’s superiority and lifted United to one point. Even if it had ended in a narrow defeat for United, as seemed likely for a while, it would have been a marked improvement on the previous three derbies; For the first time in at least a decade, they appear to be on the upswing.

But what about the city? It says a lot about the standard they have built that their run of 14 games with nine wins can be shaken. But on display Carabao Cup defeat at Southampton was mysteriously worse. And they just did Everton failed to break through. That’s a seven-point drop in their last five league games and, while only recently looking like a potentially decisive blip, it’s been enough to allow United to close in and open an eight-point lead over Arsenal. Tottenham Sunday.

At least temporarily, the aura, the sense of the city as an inescapable, unstoppable force, is gone. This, again, will lead to questions about the impact of Erling Haaland, who mustered just 19 touches. That he is, and his effectiveness in front of goal – 21 Premier League goals already this season – can hardly be doubted. But he has forced a change in the way City play, and not just because of his lack of involvement in the long skeins of passing that have always characterized Pep Guardiola’s side.

Haaland’s directness means he needs the ball played quickly to take advantage of his barreling runs. But that never went Guardiola’s way. He has said that it takes 15 passes for his side to be able to attack with a reasonable sense of security that they will not be undone by a quick counter-attack, which is essential for their superior defensive line, the press, that makes them. weak

Although both goals were conceded here, whatever the doubt about the first, the back four came from a back four pass that has often been their fatal weakness, especially in Europe (and again, Guardiola’s side was undone. A flurry of approved targets in quick succession).

United are improving, the offside laws have changed to seem absurd at times, but some things remain the same: when City fail, it feels so familiar, so long-standing, that Aquinas and Scotus might have written about them.