It was hard to decide what was the strangest thing about Tuesday night's incident at Old Trafford. The sight of both referee Mark Clattenburg and his assistant Robert Lewis failing to spot Roy Carroll dropping Pedro Mendes' 55-yard strike over his own goalline was bizzare enough.

But watching Sir Alex Ferguson admit that he saw the incident, and that his side should have conceded a goal, was even more astonishing.

When even the Manchester United boss accepts that a mistake has been made, it is clearly time for a change.

That change, according to the Football Association, should involve the use of television replays to determine whether or not the ball has crossed the line.

The FA have been quick enough to embrace video technology as a means of bringing unruly players to book but have shied away from advocating the use of replays to help officials make difficult decisions.

The appointment of Brian Barwick as the FA's new chief executive, though, seems to have finally dragged football's mandarins into the 21st century.

Barwick, who officially takes up his new post on January 31, spent 24 years working in the television industry and, unsurprisingly, he sees the small screen as the best way to get the big decisions right.

"It will be sheer folly not to use TV action replays in cases where there are doubts over whether the ball crossed the goalline," said Barwick, before Tuesday's events gave his words even more weight.

Sepp Blatter is another advocate of goalline technology, and the FIFA president will be in Cardiff next month when adidas make a presentation to the International Football Association Board.

The German equipment manufacturers have designed a football with a microchip in it that bleeps once the ball has fully crossed the goalline.

The noise on Tuesday night would have been deafening and, with Blatter proposing a trial of the technology in this season's Carling Cup final, new rules could be in place by the time next season's Premiership gets under way.

That is to be commended because, when a nationwide television audience can instantly see what has happened, there is no need for the referee to be kept in the dark.

Decisions like Tuesday night's have massive repercussions. If Tottenham miss out on Champions League qualification by a single point, this week's mistake will cost them more than £20m.

In the past, Ferguson has argued that stopping the game for clarification would take too much time.

Last night's decision would have taken a matter of seconds but, even in the more complex cases of goalline confusion, there would be no need for any stoppage to take longer than 30 seconds.

Or, to put it another way, no longer than it takes for every player who has received treatment to wander unnecessarily from the pitch before waving to the referee to be allowed back on.

In utilising goalline technology, football will merely be catching up. Cricket already uses video replays to determine whether a batsman has made his ground when the opposition attempt to run him out, while rugby league has a fourth official ruling on whether or not a player has crossed the try line.

But, while the use of video replays is now common-place in most other sports, football needs to be wary of just how closely it embraces modern technology.

Using outside help to rule on a matter of fact is one thing - stopping the game for clarification of a more subjective point is quite another matter.

There is a danger of technology slowly infiltrating other areas of the game.

When Wayne Rooney tumbled to the floor to win a penalty against Arsenal this season, a number of commentators talked about what would have happened had a video referee been able to view the incident on a television screen.

Similarly, when Chelsea midfielder Tiago clearly handled the ball against Liverpool last week, Rafael Benitez talked about making sure such fouls were always penalised in the future.

After talking about the use of goalline technology last year, Barwick went on to say that: "TV could resolve most penalty disputes."

That is a worrying statement. Firstly, TV cannot resolve most penalty disputes - there is normally a degree of confusion about what constitutes intent - and, secondly, the thought of stopping the game for every difficult decision sends shivers down the spines of most football fans.

Passionate arguments about the rights or wrongs of a certain decision are part of the appeal of the game because, nine times out of ten, there is no right or wrong answer.

Goalline issues are black or white - the ball is either over the line or it isn't - but, for everything else in football, things are normally a shade of grey. No matter how far technology advances, it will never be able to fully address that.