EPL 2.0

AP:

THE ENGLISH Premier League rarely stands still.

For the 2024-25 season starting on Friday, there are five newly hired managers, around $1.6 billion worth of new players (and counting), new offside technology, updated financial regulations and a tweaked match schedule.

A quarter of the coaches will be taking charge of a Premier League game for the first time, with Liverpool (Arne Slot), Chelsea (Enzo Maresca), and Brighton (Fabian Hurzeler) all having new managers and both Southampton (Russell Martin) and Ipswich (Kieran McKenna) gaining promotion with managers owning no top-flight experience.

Throw in Julen Lopetegui being the new guy at West Ham after four and half years of David Moyes at the helm and Steve Cooper replacing Maresca at Leicester, and the dugouts will look different this season. Most of the intrigue, however, will focus on Slot and what style he implements at Liverpool after the team’s nearly nine years with the popular Jurgen Klopp. Rock ‘n’ roll could turn into more control, with Slot preferring more of a possession game.

The Premier League’s 20 clubs have spent as much on new players in this transfer window as those in Spain, Italy and Germany combined, according to transfermarkt.com. So why does it feel such a slow summer of trading? Maybe because there have been no blockbuster deals, with the most expensive being striker Dominic Solanke moving to Tottenham from Bournemouth for 65 million pounds (US$83 million). However, lots of deals for between $30-70 million quickly add up – and there are still three weeks left in the window, during which Manchester City, Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, and Chelsea are expected to weigh in. City (Savinho) and Arsenal (Riccardo Calafiori) have only made one new signing so far and Liverpool haven’t made any. Come the end of transfer deadline day on August 30, don’t be surprised if Premier League clubs have spent way more than $2 billion – even if most are balancing the books with sales because of the league’s sterner financial rules.

Expect offside decisions to be reached much quicker in the Premier League this season. The competition is introducing semi-automated offside technology for the first time, with the new system set to be launched during the first half of the season. Multiple cameras will track player movements and record data points on parts of the body that are relevant for an offside decision. Data is processed with artificial intelligence to create a 3D offside line that is alerted to the team of VAR officials. It is expected to take an average of around 30 seconds off the length of time it currently takes VAR officials to come to a decision manually. Semi-automated offsides were used at the 2022 World Cup and at the recent European Championship. On Tuesday, the league launched an account on the social platform X, dedicated to offering live refereeing and VAR clarifications from all matches this season.

“For the first time, the social media account will provide near-live explainers and updates on operational and officiating matters for every Premier League matches,” the league said.

Last season in the Premier League was notable for some clubs, like Everton and Nottingham Forest, receiving points deductions for breaking the competition’s profitability and sustainability regulations, which are now being more strictly applied. This coming season is the final year of those regulations, with two new forms of spending caps being trialled ahead of their introduction from the 2025-26 season. Teams in England’s top division will trial a “Squad Cost Rules” system, which will limit spending on players to 85 per cent of a club’s football revenue and net profit or loss on player sales. A second system called “Top to Bottom Anchoring” limits – or anchors – spending to a multiple of the lowest combined prize money and cash from TV rights forecast to be earned by a team. The league said the systems aimed to “improve and preserve clubs’ financial sustainability and the competitive balance of the Premier League.”

“Obviously we want to move to a new system that people have confidence in and can comply with,” Premier League CEO Richard Masters told the BBC on Tuesday, “and move away perhaps from normalising asterisks against league tables or long-running regulatory cases. That’s not what we’re aiming for.”

The Premier League is renowned for being a relentless slog – even more so this season. There’s no winter break for clubs this time, with the season starting later, to give players more time to recover from international tournaments this summer, and therefore being squeezed. Last year, for example, five games were held each weekend over a two-week period, giving teams at least one weekend off over January. All of Europe’s other big leagues will have a winter break.