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Should Chelsea's goal have been ruled out for offside?

2025-12-01 16:14
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Should Chelsea's goal have been ruled out for offside?

Another weekend, and another set of subjective decisions - and a possible offside on Chelsea's goal against Arsenal appears to have gone under the radar. Reece James floated a corner in from the left ...

Should Chelsea's goal have been ruled out for offside?Story byTrevoh Chalobah of Chelsea scores against Arsenal[Getty Images]Dale Johnson - Football issues correspondentMon, December 1, 2025 at 4:14 PM UTC·1 min read

Another weekend, and another set of subjective decisions - and a possible offside on Chelsea's goal against Arsenal appears to have gone under the radar.

Reece James floated a corner in from the left and Trevoh Chalobah flicked a header into the back of the net.

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But there was a problem. Enzo Fernandez was stood in an offside position and was very close to Piero Hincapie and Cristhian Mosquera.

Did Fernandez influence the decision-making of either defender? If the Chelsea midfielder was not there, would there have been a better chance of stopping the header going in?

Fernandez did not try to play the ball and, while he was not directly engaging with Mosquera, he had his arm on Hincapie's back.

You can make a very strong case for offside so it comes back to a question of consistency again.

It was looked at by the VAR team, who did not think there was any impact on the defenders.

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Perhaps if we had not had the decision given against Andy Robertson for Liverpool against Manchester City earlier in November, we would not be talking about offside on this goal.

Read more about the issues this weekend

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