Argument over armpits is a sign we need change

THE last straw was the debate over the positioning of Jamie Vardy’s oxter.

Big Ross was adamant the Leicester striker’s clavicle had wandered into an offside position.

Yours truly argued he’d pulled his shoulder up to his left ear just in time, a la Michael Jackson in the Thriller video, and that VAR should tell Arsenal to Beat It.

In the end, the England star’s late equaliser at the Emirates on Tuesday night was allowed to stand but it didn’t half spark a debate.

Big Ross and I have formed a household bubble to watch Premier League football these last few weeks but lockdown is causing too many flare-ups.

The big man is a postie who spends his time running truckloads of letters and parcels up and down the M80 to the Glasgow mail centre.

We threw another first class delivery into the back of his van on Wednesday morning, a plea to FIFA in Switzerland to sort out the offside law once and for all.

Surely the moment has come for the game’s governing body to consider the most radical overhaul of football’s laws since they banned the pass back?

It’s time to end the charade of deciding which part of a player’s body is offside and consider, instead, those parts that are.

Bluntly, discounting the arms – you aren’t allowed to score a goal with that part of the anatomy – if any part of a player’s body is onside, the goal should stand.

That means no more zooming in on micro details, where the difference between a goal given or discounted can fall on whether a player has had a shave.

So a left leg has strayed centimetres offside? Who cares, as long as his right leg is ruled legitimate – and ditto head, shoulders, knees and toes.

FIFA employs the best in the business, including coaches such as Arsene Wenger and ref supervisor Pierluigi Collina.

They are smart and astute men and they must know, along with their paymasters, the credibility of the game is being underlined time and again when such big decisions are made on such marginal details.

In truth, even after arguing, we were still none the wiser.

However, Vardy’s speed and movement and the clinical nature of his finish from six yards deserved the ultimate reward of the goal that

For the full benefits of the VAR technology to be felt, the laws must be tweaked

was eventually given. VAR has improved football’s lot but frustrated the life out of fans at the same time and for the full benefits of the technology to be felt, the laws of the game must be tweaked.

Understandably, the introduction of the new technology has fallen off the agenda of the Scottish game these last few months but it will rear its head again soon.

If Hearts and Partick Thistle win their forthcoming arbitration case at the SFA, it will only add to the size of the bill Scottish football must pay from the new broadcasting deal.

It will be all shoulders to the wheel, whether they have strayed into an offside position or not.