EDDIE Howe says proposed changes to the offside law would be "game-changing" after suggestions made by Arsene Wenger this week.

The former Arsenal boss, now chief of global football development at FIFA, said there may be room to change the offside law "a little bit" after it has been brought into the spotlight following a string of marginal VAR calls in the Premier League this season.

He said: "You have had offsides by a fraction of a centimetre, literally by a nose.

"There is room to change the rule and not say that a part of a player’s nose is offside, so you are offside because you can score with that.

"Instead, you will be not be offside if any part of the body that can score a goal is in line with the last defender, even if other parts of the attacker’s body are in front.

"That will sort it out and you will no longer have decisions about millimetres and a fraction of the attacker being in front of the defensive line."

Any change would need to be approved by the law-making body, the International Football Association Board and Wenger later moved to clarify his comments, adding: "My objective, as well as FIFA’s, is to continuously think about ways to improve our game and we shouldn’t be afraid to debate them in public, but I am well aware that any rules changes are subject to a standard approval process."

Asked for his thoughts on the proposed changes to offside suggested by Wenger to benefit the attacking side, Cherries boss Howe said: "Depends which situation you are in! It’s a difficult one.

"The changes that are talked about will be quite game-changing. It will have a massive advantage then for the attacking side.

"It may well be then that you have to change how you defend. It would need to be seen to see how much it would change the game.

"Certainly I am all for changes that can enhance the game, that can make it more entertaining. As long as there is consistency in what is done, I have no problem with it.

"Being an attacking team that likes to play on the front foot it may well suit us, I don’t know. Let’s wait and see."

Southampton boss Ralph Hasenhuttl yesterday questioned Wenger's idea, saying: "If we change it the way he wants to do it we can stop playing offside because it won't work any more."

Asked if he was open to the changes, Howe added: "I am open to things that can make the game better. I have always said the beauty of VAR is the calls it guarantees to get right.

"It’s the ones that are subjective for me that are still decisions that are made by humans that can be right or wrong. The offside is something you can’t really argue with.

"You can argue with the fact that ‘should it be offside?’ in terms of the laws you are saying but you can’t argue with the decision because the technology is there."