Howard Webb is right, and he shouldn't need to say it twice. The accidental handball law is broken, everyone watching football already knows it, and the head of refereeing in this country has now said so out loud.
Speaking on Match Officials Mic'd Up on Tuesday, Webb called the current law "a bit of a nonsense" and called for reform. He was prompted by an incident from Manchester United's match against Ipswich, where Harry Maguire handled the ball before taking a shot that deflected off Jacob Greaves and into the net. Because another player touched it before it crossed the line, it stood as an own goal. Had Maguire's shot gone in directly, the goal would have been disallowed.
Webb spelled out the absurdity himself: "If he strikes the ball beautifully into the top corner, then the goal gets disallowed. He skews his shot, it becomes an own goal, and it's awarded."
That is not a close call. That is the law producing the opposite outcome depending on how well a player strikes a ball that he has just handled. It is indefensible.
What the Law Should Do
Webb's proposed fix is sensible. Strip it back. Let officials ask the same questions they would for any handball: did the player make themselves bigger, did they deliberately handle it? If the answer is no, let the game breathe. The current framework forces VAR teams to make increasingly marginal calls about whether a shot was on target, whether the trajectory was altered, and who gets credited with the goal. None of that is what the law is supposed to protect.
"The worst-case scenario for us," Webb said, "is that the officials decide that the ball is going wide and it's an own goal, but then later on the goal is attributed to the player that scored, whose arm it hit." That scenario is not hypothetical. It is baked into how the law currently works.
[Are Manchester United as poor as the early Premier League table suggests?](/uprise/football/are-manchester-united-as-poor-as-the-early-premier-league) is already a live debate, and these kinds of VAR flashpoints do not help anyone get clarity on what is actually happening on the pitch.
The Derby Error
Webb also addressed the Manchester derby controversy directly. VAR official Matt Donohue and his assistant Blake Antrobus were stood down on Monday after Pro Ref acknowledged "an error of judgment" in allowing Erling Haaland's winning goal to stand. Donohue correctly identified that Haaland was onside, overturning the on-field call, but failed to notice that Enzo Fernández was influencing play from an offside position, something Webb said should have triggered a recommendation for an on-field review.
Webb's description was pointed. Donohue got "tunnel vision", fixating on Haaland because that was the original decision under review. "It's down to the rest of his team to pull him out of that tunnel," Webb said, "and unfortunately, that didn't happen."
The [build-up to the derby](/uprise/football/febrile-manchester-derby-awaits-amid-growing-rift-between-united-fans) was already charged. What followed made it worse.
Our Take
Webb fronting up publicly is better than silence, and his critique of the handball law is correct on the merits. But the honest verdict here is that acknowledging a mess is not the same as cleaning it up. Donohue and Antrobus are stood down, Webb is disappointed, and the handball law will eventually be passed up to IFAB. Until then, officials keep navigating rules that produce results nobody can actually justify.