A former head of the PGMOL has ‘demanded a rule change’ after one moment in Manchester United’s 1-0 loss to Chelsea on Friday night.
Man Utd suffered their 18th Premier League loss of the season on Friday evening and the 1-0 defeat at Stamford Bridge leaves them 16th in the table.
Head coach Ruben Amorim named a strong XI as he looked to build momentum ahead of the Europa League final against Tottenham Hotspur next Wednesday, but his players did not turn up as they produced another disappointing performance.
Chelsea were comfortably the better side, but they did not take the lead until the 71st minute as Marc Cucurella got on the end of a cross by Reece James.
Man Utd looked to have gone ahead inside the opening 20 minutes as Harry Maguire converted, but his goal was ruled out for a very narrow offside.
Now, former PGMOL chief Keith Hackett has ‘demanded’ the offisde rule to be changed, as the current regulations are “detrimental to the game”.
“It is frankly detrimental to the game to have goals ruled out for a toe being offside. This decision to rule out the goal is in line with the current law,” Hackett told Football Insider.
“My view is that the law on offside needs to change and move towards the interpretation that is suggested by FIFA technical director Arsene Wenger and [give the] benefit of the doubt with [the need for] daylight between attacker and defender.”
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Hackett also commented on three more flashpoints during Chelsea’s win vs Man Utd, insisting the officials were right to deny penalties after Tyrique George and Amad Diallo dived inside the penalty area.
“VAR correctly intervened to advise referee Kavanagh that his penalty kick award to Chelsea should be reviewed,” Hackett added.
“Replays clearly show no contact by the goalkeeper on his opponent.
“Review at the monitor by Kavanagh and his penalty kick decision was correctly overturned.”
After reviewing Amad’s dive, Hackett continued: “Good to see the referee yellow card Manchester United’s Amad for a clear act of simulation attempting to deceive the referee.”
On Chelsea’s appeals for a penalty for a supposed handball by Rasmus Hojlund, he said: “The ball was struck hard in the direction of Hojlund who had no chance of getting his hand out of the way given such a short distance involved. Correct decision by the officials.”
Despite another loss, Man Utd boss Amorim attempted to take positives from the Chelsea match.
“I think we started great, well but in the final third we needed to be a bit more aggressive,” Amorim said.
“We were there, we faced the game in the right way. It was a bit of bad luck today. Sometimes we want to press and to score a goal but we lost a little bit of concentration.
“It was different but you never like when you lose the game. We were competitive, that was clear.”