Seeing as the goal is against city not sure how any allegiance to them would affect my opinion here
.
FyI I am a neutral spectator.
The laws say:
Handling the ball involves a deliberate act of a player making contact with the
ball with the hand or arm.
Yes the laws says you should consider a b and c, but they are considerations and the main question is it a deliberate act of making contact with the hand or arm.
But for arguments sake lets look at each of the considerations....
• the movement of the hand towards the ball (not the ball towards the hand) - no movement of the hand or arm..yes the body is moving towards the ball but there is no conscious movement of the hand or arm, the arm remains in a natural position.
• the distance between the opponent and the ball (unexpected ball) - seeing as the attacker is attempting to header and he is so close I am going to argue that this is actually an unexpected ball. He thinks he is going to head it, if he had any hair he probably might have it was that close and therefore from the point he misses the header he has no opportunity to move his arm out of the way. That being said it could also be argued that this consideration is irrelevant as this is about distance between the opponent and ball. His opponent is n/a in this scenario.
• the position of the hand does not necessarily mean that there is an offence.. probably not applicable here as we arent talking about unnatural positions.
Again as we always conclude the law is poorly written and lacks the neccessary guidance to get a uniform decision amongst referees.
Can I ask, why is it thay u think this is a deliberate act of making contact with the ball using the hand?