Quote:
Originally Posted by Matty81
Added goals are good but i think the problem is no one knows what they are meant to call. Sometimes it seems like any trivial contact with the arm at all is a pen, but then you see them let a few obvious ones go like the chelsea handball. How close the arm is to the body seems to be all over the map.
It feels like a rule that is tough to enforce for the refs as well, it reminds me of the nhl trying to call hits where "the principle point of contact" is the head instead of all hits where people get hit in the head. You have people breaking down hits in slo-mo trying to determine which bodies parts touch first and its not an exact science.
For me, call em all, any arm contact in the box at all or let everything but the intentional ones go (still judgment based but a bit better) but an arbitrary grey line like this in a multi billion dollar stake industry is not great business.
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The problem is that players will be aiming for arms. It makes no difference whether you’re anywhere near a goal, or intentionally playing the ball with your hand. It’s got to be a serious consideration to go for at this point, because players are good enough to do this and you could score 3-4 a game that way. I thought for sure there was another penalty on Dier a couple sequences earlier that was nearly the exact same. They said the ball went off his back, but it looked like the arm to me. So...maybe it’s already happening. Maybe Andy Carroll is actually going to be useful in this new game!