In a news item from Friday, Spanish doctor has apparently published a paper that explains that the human eye cannot accurately assess whether a player is offside under the rules of football. This is because officials have to be able to keep in view four players simultaneously: the attacking player making the pass; the intended receiver; and, two defenders. This will not surprise most football fans.

I’ve always thought that this particular incapacity has put an unfair burden on players who are exceptionally quick. Linesmen (for it is they who make almost all offside calls) see a forward yards behind the line of defence and conclude that they must be offside. My own “exhibit A” in this line of thought was Denis Law. He anticipated the pass so well and accelerated so quickly that he would often be fifteen yards or more behind the defence, if was playing the “trap”, when he picked up the ball. If you weren’t looking for it, most people would conclude that “he must have been offside”. It's hard to really blame the officials. Yet I’m convinced that most of the time he wasn’t offside. My guess is he was robbed of between 20-30 goals between 1963 and 1969. I got into the habit of tracking Law a good percentage of the time when either Charlton or Crerand had the ball. You could see that he could read from their posture that they were about to hit a through ball and he would break along the line of defence and then sharply veer goalwards as the pass was struck; he could get an astonishing distance behind the nearest defender.

Among United’s opponents of that era there was one player who suffered the same fate as Law, possibly worse; Jimmy Greaves. I saw Greaves at Old Trafford three times; he scored only twice but should have had at least three more. I have not seen anyone since as quick as these two. Owen is the nearest but I don’t think he quite reads the play as well as Law and Greaves did; nevertheless I think Owen has been robbed of a good number of goal opportunities already in his career. Ruud van Nistelrooy is a fantastic goalscorer but beating the offside trap is not one of his great strengths. Although he’s no slouch at anything to do with scoring goals. Similarly, Henri is a defender’s nightmare and lightning fast but doesn’t get a lot of goals from beating the offside trap nor, reciprocally, does he have them disallowed much.