The English Premier League (EPL) governing body are set for a big policy change in officiating ahead of the 2024/25 season kick-off.
In bid to facilitate transparency and fairness, it has now been revealed that the referees appointment policy will be made public for the very first time in a move to protect football’s integrity and allow for healthy competition.
It will be notable that this development comes after Nottingham Forest were charged by the Football Association in May for thier public outburst over the decision to appoint Stuart Attwell – a Luton fan – for their crucial match against Everton where they felt the referee denied three clear penalty claims amid concerns of bias from the club.
Following this claims and many more, the PGMOL are now putting their match appointments policy into the pubic domain to achieve a level of transparency with regards to how they select the officiating team for each game before every matchday, a development that has since garnered positive reactions from the fans around the globe.
“Officials are asked to declare any specific interests in advance of the season, and as the season goes on should any of those things change,”, Howard Webb, chief refereeing officer for the PGMOL stated.
Providing more clarity, he posited that reviews will be given before making appointments, “we’ll review each of those and then make a decision on appointments, because there’s a conflict of interests if you declare yourself as a supporter of a club, or if you’ve played for a club”.
“If you’ve got any personal connections to people who work for clubs as well, we’ll make an evaluation of all of those factors”.
Meanwhile, new rules are set to be introduced for the 2024/25 Premier League campaign as semi-automated offsides will be introduced but won’t start until AFTER the international break in September, October or even November.
Only the captain can speak to the referee. Any other player will be automatically carded if they confront officials and referees will no longer automatically give a yellow card for non-deliberate handballs.
VAR officials will not get involved in subjective decisions: only CLEAR and OBVIOUS errors will be looked at with team news set to be released 75 minutes before kick-off.
No mid-season/Christmas break for the players as well as stoppage time been made shorter as revealed by The Athletic FC.