Washington [US], August 3 : The 2023/24 Premier League season will begin on August 12 and the English Football Championship will start on Saturday. Premier League and EFL officials will add World Cup-style amounts of injury time to matches as part of directives for the new season. Officials to crack down on dissent, be more lenient on physical challenges and add on wasted time.
A crackdown on time-wasting and dissent as well as a much stricter policing of the bench and technical areas are at the heart of new refereeing guidelines that will be in force for the start of the football season.
According to Sky Sports, "Officials have become increasingly concerned with statistics that show how little the ball has been in play in professional matches in England, with averages last season of just 48 minutes in League Two, 50 minutes in League One, 52 minutes in the Championship and just under 55 minutes in the Premier League."
More time will be added on too for goal celebrations, which officials feel have become lengthier and more elaborate.
Referees will now be obliged to specifically time how long the game is stopped before the re-start for game interruptions, such as a goal, a substitution, an injury, or preparations for a free-kick.
On the pitch, as an attempt to allow the game to flow better and reduce stoppages, a higher threshold will be applied to "contact" between players - meaning there should be fewer free-kicks awarded for incidents which last season might well have been penalised for being overly physical.
However, as per the existing referee guidelines, any challenge deemed "careless" will be deemed a foul, and who are "reckless" will receive a yellow card, and any player who "endangers the safety" of an opponent will be sent off.
The threshold for a player to be shown a yellow card for dissent will be reduced this season.
Whenever more than one player approaches the referee, at least one of those players, and potentially more, will be shown an automatic yellow card. Practically, any player that runs from a distance to approach the match officials will be booked.
The behaviour of managers and their backroom staff will come under greater scrutiny, with an automatic yellow card if there is ever more than one coach in the technical area and harsher penalties for managers that leave their technical area.
Aggression from coaches, towards match officials or opponents, will be routinely met with a red card, and any club official sent off will no longer be allowed to watch the game from the stands. Instead, they must be out of sight of the pitch.
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