The much-discussed Premier League rule changes were implemented for the first time in Gameweek 1 of Fantasy Premier League (FPL).

While acknowledging that we’re dealing with a tiny sample of data, here’s what we noticed from the weekend’s action.

TIME ADDED ON

Referees in the Premier League have been instructed by football’s lawmakers to be more fastidious when calculating the time lost to stoppages this season.

We saw more added time on the opening weekend, as a result.

Using the ‘Time Played – Raw’ stat available in the Custom Stats section of our website, we can see how long each Gameweek 1 match lasted:

While the serious knee issue picked up by Tyrone Mings (£4.5m) was a big factor in why Newcastle United v Aston Villa had so much added time on Saturday, there had also been a long pause for a Ben Godfrey (£4.5m) injury in Everton v Chelsea in Gameweek 1 of 2022/23. One major stoppage apiece, then, when comparing the opening weekends of the last two campaigns.

The graphic below from Opta also shows that the ball was in play by an average of over three minutes more per match in Gameweek 1 (note: these figures were provided before Man Utd v Wolves).

One thing to watch out for in Gameweek 2 is that the English Football League immediately recorded a sizeable drop in match time from Matchday 1 to 2. Whether that’s referees being less finicky with their officiating or players quickly learning that time-wasting doesn’t pay anymore is open to debate.

There were three Premier League goals scored in added time at the weekend: Emerson Royal (£4.5m) for Spurs v Brentford (45’+4), Harvey Barnes (£6.5m) for Newcastle v Aston Villa (90’+1) and Evan Ferguson (£6.0m) for Brighton v Luton (90’+5). Given the stoppages for injuries, VAR and substitutions in each game, it’s difficult to argue whether the extra added time contributed to any of those strikes.

Jorginho‘s (£5.5m) penalty for Chelsea v Everton, deep into first-half stoppage time of that aforementioned match, was the only injury-time goal in Gameweek 1 of 2022/23.

BOOKINGS

Before the start of the season, there were two stand-out directives:

• Punishments for time-wasting are no longer restricted to the final minutes of a game, with referees encouraged to clamp down on “clear and impactful actions”
• The threshold for a player to be shown a yellow card for dissent has been reduced

Using the referee data from our Premium Members Area, we can see the breakdown of the types of offences that led to yellow/red cards in Gameweek 1.

There were actually the same number of cards issued for fouls in Gameweek 1 of this season as there were on the opening weekend of 2022/23.

What increased, unsurprisingly, were cautions for dissent (three times as many) and time-wasting (twice as many).

Andy Madley was the busiest busybody in the middle in Gameweek 1.

Booking eight players in total in the Newcastle United v Aston Villa game, only three of his cautions were for fouls.

Sven Botman (£4.5m), Bruno Guimaraes (£6.0m) and Douglas Luiz (£5.5m) were booked for dissent, Lucas Digne (£4.5m) was cautioned for not retreating and Sandro Tonali (£5.5m) was shown the yellow card for time-wasting.

GAMEWEEK 1 REFEREES: CARDS DISHED OUT

FINAL THOUGHTS

It’s still too early to draw too many firm conclusions from the rule changes, especially if the referees become less officious as the weeks go on.

But the fag-packet maths would suggest we may get an extra 50-odd goals per season (there were 1,085 in total in 2022/23) with an extra three minutes or so of ball-in-play time per game.

Attacking players who regularly start and finish a game, as well as serial super-subs, may see a very modest bump in their points potential, then.

As for the extra bookings, these too may become less noticeable as 2023/24 drags on.

But should dissent and time-wasting be continued to be clamped down on, extra red cards and bans for yellow card accumulation would be inevitable.

Players have to avoid picking up five bookings before their club has contested 19 league fixtures in order to avoid a one-match ban; look out for our Suspension Tightrope articles for more details on that in the future.

FPL managers may be calling on their benches a tad more often in 2023/24, then, with the threat of a suspension slightly greater than it was before.