'What's the point? What's the actual point?'
Patrick Bamford (maybe)
Even on furlough I didn't get round to opening that 'Learn Ancient Greek' book which I absolutely had to buy a few years ago.
So forgive me if I'm mis-translating, but 'nostalgia' in a sporting sense mostly seems to mean 'pining for that time when my team was the best and them'uns weren't doing far better than us'.
Supporters of Liverpool and Manchester City certainly don't subscribe to the absurd notion that 'modern football is rubbish', a theory mostly propounded by middle-aged followers of the team which fills the middle of the Venn diagram showing those two clubs' greatest rivals.
Funnily enough, the moaners often have a tendency to display a fondness for a certain 'how dare you say Spanish!' club which is also literally known by a combination of blue and red – and which isn't doing so well at present either.
Yet enough mathematics and colour theory; even supporters of currently successful sides would acknowledge that present-day soccer does have many dislikeable aspects.
Although, in the week when Marco van Basten is promoting his autobiography, perhaps people should stop pining for 'the good old days' when men were men and attacker's ankles were fair game for brutal assaults from thuggish defenders.
Leave aside also the rapacious, voracious, ever-increasing 'need' for money shown by many big clubs for at least another week.
Let's talk again about the mind-boggling officiating, which has entered into the realm of theoretical physics, with a side-twist of gory self-harm.
In a field almost as competitive as the top six of the English Premier League (and that doesn't even include Man City, who will be up much higher very soon) there were two truly terrible decisions at the weekend.
The first involved the aforementioned Leeds striker Patrick Bamford (see top of column), who scored a fine goal, with a neat finish after a well-timed run to beat Crystal Palace's offside trap.
Except some utter clown decided it wasn't a goal.
Bamford had pointed to show his team-mate where to play the pass – and that movement meant his upper arm was slightly advanced compared to the last defender.
Cogito ergo VARistoomuch.
In theory Bamford could have scored with the upper part of his arm – but only if he'd cut off the rest of it, the bit that was pointing forward.
Offside decisions should only be awarded if they are clear and obvious.
If you have to take minutes splitting hairs to see that an attacker's upper arm was millimetres ahead of the last defender – probably – then it is clearly, obviously, not clear and obvious.
Arms are a problem for defenders too, of course.
This column has previously outlined the unfairness of basically forcing defenders to keep their arms close by their side in order to reduce the risk of conceding handballs, which obviously adversely affects their balance.
The second shocking piece of officiating involved the leaders – not the team at the top before the weekend but the ones who are there now.
I'm in the minority, but I actually thought the penalty awarded against Liverpool to Manchester City wasn't all that bad a decision.
Yes, Liverpool's Joe Gomez was trying to get his arm out of the way – but he didn't do so quickly enough. His arm was out from his side and he could have lifted it up to avoid the ball.
Sure, that ball was whipped across at a rate of knots by Kevin de Bruyne, but there were still more than eight yards between the kick and the handball.
There was less than half that distance involved in the similar penalty awarded to Leicester City against Wolves though. Dennis Praet belted a cross, which struck Max Kilman's less than three-and-a-half yards away.
Surely there should be minimum distance between ball and hand in such circumstances, at least six yards?
The speed involved, the time the defending player has to react, is the key issue.
Referees simply have to stop making these decisions based on watching slow motion footage.
I remember the first time I saw a Sky Sports slo-mo montage (a slo-montage?).
As someone whose glittering career was cut short by a combination of torn ACL and mangled cartilage, I cringed, expecting players to be out for months with ruptured knee or ankle ligaments.
Instead, they got up and ran on.
Everything looks worse, more dramatic in slo-mo.
So referees should clearly, obviously, watch the incident at normal speed, decide if the defender really could have got his arm/ hand out of the way in that timeframe, and then make their decision accordingly.
Rather than microscopic scrutiny of upper arms or a ludicrously hard and fast handball law, there are things that could be done to make the game fairer and better.
Make the penalty area a 'D' rather than a rectangle, reflecting the fact that it's far more difficult to score from the extreme edges of that 18-yard box, given the distance from the goal. And extremely difficult to score when you're moving away from goal at the outer edges of the box.
At the very least, when it comes to fouls rather than handballs, the free shot (penalty kick) awarded – just attacker against goalkeeper – should be taken from the place where the offence actually occurred, not from that central spot 12 yards in front of the goal-line.
VAR would probably have over-turned the daft penalty awarded against Northern Ireland two years ago in the first, home leg of their World Cup play-off against Switzerland, at least under the handball law as it was then.
Now, though, you never know, given the tendency of officials to back each other up, no matter how daft the original decision is.
Already NI have received some good fortune by being able to host tomorrow night's one-game play-off final against Slovakia, although that home advantage is lessened by the restrictions on the size of the crowd.
Fingers crossed, hands clamped by your sides, that another brainless arm-related call doesn't go against them.
