Blue cards and sin bins would only make add to football's over-complication - Stuart Rayner

It is more than 40 years since the death of one of British football's greatest managers, yet Bill Shankly’s words are ringing truer than ever.

Football’s simplicity is such a big part of its popularity, but those in charge of writing its rules seem determined to undermine it.

Thank goodness plans to introduce blue cards and sin bins for dissent and tactical fouls, cooling-off periods for whole teams and "captain-only zones", due to be announced last Friday, have been put on ice following a backlash by professionals and supporters alike.

No sport should be frozen in sepia-tinted stasis as the world evolves around it. But most of the changes needed to the laws at the moment are to undo recent ham-fisted efforts to improve them.

It was probably 20 years ago I shook my head in pity when a colleague who covered Six Nations rugby union told me most journalists in the press box at those games did not fully understand the over-complicated rules of that sport.

Now, barely a week goes by without someone prominent in English professional football saying openly: "I don't know what the handball law is these days."

Two decisions in Saturday’s Luton Town v Sheffield United game reduced it to a laughing stock.

Twice referee Chris Kavanagh was told to stop the game and rewatch an incident that had happened a couple of minutes earlier, a handball the players barely appealed for – and we all know how keen footballers are to chance their arm when they think they have even a chance of a penalty.

In a corner of Stockley Park, Paul Tierney had spent the time scrutinising footage to the nth degree to find a "clear and obvious" error.

At least doing it this way reduced the hanging around. There was none of the slow handclapping that broke out at Bramall Lane seven days earlier as the officials pondered, re-pondered and re-re-pondered whether Vinicius Souza had been offside before putting the ball in Aston Villa's net.

How can deciding which side of a line drawn on a screen take so long? It is simple – or it would be were it not for the fact that the margin for error when players are running at top speed can be up to 20cm because of the time between frames.

Why referees get asked to rewatch incidents, as Kavanagh was at Kenilworth Road, is a mystery. Pitchside monitors to put decisions back in the hands of the man or woman in the middle was a very sensible decision. But we all know, Premier League referees only trot over to rubber-stamp the video assistant – yes, assistant – referee's decision after a respectful amount of time watching the footage.

And what had Tierney spotted?

That a Souza header hit the arm of Reece Burke as the former Hull City centre-back dropped back to earth at a corner, and an Elijah Adebayo header hit Souza's hands, near his head, from centimetres away.

Kavanagh and Tierney were absolutely correct in their decisions.

In recent years the handball law has been rewritten to this stupid point which makes a mockery and a lottery of defending. The proposals put on hold had the same well-meaning daftness.

The issue the game is most concerned with is the lack of flow to some matches, seemingly oblivious to VAR’s over-analysis being by far the main culprit.

Tottenham Hotspur manager Ange Postecoglou could spot the flaw in sin bins in no time at all.

"You're going to have one team just sitting there trying to waste time for 10 minutes, waiting for a guy to come on," he explained

How long would "10 minutes" even be? Would time be added for a VAR check, a player receiving treatment and his goalkeeper inevitably dawdling over goalkicks?

We are told it would apply to goalkeepers and that no player can be substituted in the sin bin, so would we see outfielders there, or would one be removed so a team ended up with two keepers once the naughty one returns?

In practice would it mean keepers getting greater leniency, or just absurdity as the team with an extra player tries to ping as many shots as it can in the next 10 minutes at the centre-forward wearing gloves?

Substitutes and managers would not be sin-binned, apparently.

It is riddled with over-complexity that would spoil a great sport.

What if they brought in a different-coloured card – yellow – to punish dissent or tactical fouls and two yellow cards saw players sent off?

Maybe a red one if dissent becomes foul and abusive or tactical fouls stop goalscoring chances?

If teams need cooling-off periods because they are surrounding referees, those referees are not doing their job correctly.

The tools are there to manage the game as it is. Focus on using them correctly and distinguishing between cheating and accidents before cluttering football with more complications.

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