Rule changes create more issues than they solve

TECHNICALLY SPEAKING

Football is a mature game. Look at the12 laws drawn up by the nascent Football Association in1863 and what they describe is immediately identifiable as football. After a few years of rapid development, those laws have undergone such minor modification that the1925 change in the offside law and the prohibition of the back-pass in1992 feel like seismic events.

But we do live in an age of tinkering and tweaking, and thanks in part because of the personality of David Elleray, the