New Rules, New faces — The Premier League is back

The Premier League began on Friday, with Manchester City bidding to continue their supremacy in English football and Ipswich making their top-flight return.

Manchester United hosted Fulham on Friday.

Ipswich host Liverpool on Saturday before Manchester City travel to Chelsea on Sunday in the two most eye-catching games of the opening weekend.

Arsenal will be hoping they can finally pip Manchester City to the title, while Manchester United are looking to recover from their worst season since 1990.

There will be tweaks to handball, VAR and injury time, plus more.

BBC Sport looks at who, and what, is new and what we can expect in the 2024-25 Premier League campaign.

What is new? Changes to VAR, blocking and handball
The video assistant referee system will have a higher bar for intervening than before.

The “referee’s call” means that the VAR should only intervene if they can “see without any doubt the on-pitch official has made a clear mistake”.

Otherwise the initial decision will stand. That means fewer stoppages for marginal decisions to be repeatedly rewatched.

“Let’s have the confidence to not be too forensic on our analysis,” is what refereeing boss Howard Webb has said.

The Premier League Match Centre account, external on social media platform X will post “near-live” explanations of VAR decisions.

It plans to show more replays and explain decisions on the big screens in stadiums, too.

We will see a significant drop in stoppage time this season – because of a change in timing goal celebrations.

Until now time was added on for every second between the ball hitting the net and the kick-off being taken.

Now the clock will only be started after 30 seconds. So a game with six goals would have three minutes less of stoppage time.

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