Howard Webb has warned fans they can expect to see more penalties this season after he instructed referees to have another go at cracking one of the most incorrigible problems in the Premier League: players clinging on to each other in the penalty area.
New guidance on how to deal with holding has been shared with referees by Professional Game Match Officials (PGMO), with the aim of cutting the number of incidents where a player’s movement is impeded by an opponent. It follows consultation with club officials and leading players who all complained about the practice.
“The feedback that we had is that there’s just a few too many examples of players clearly pulling people back impacting their ability to move to the ball or some clear extreme actions are not being penalised,” said Webb, the chief referee officer, before the Premier League season starts on Friday night. “They’re the ones I expect us to catch. Therefore I would expect this time next year for there to have been a few more penalties given for holding offences than what we’ve seen this year. But not a huge swing of the pendulum.”
The new guidance allows space for referees to analyse instances of holding and assess how severe or extreme it may be. The criteria a referee is expected to consider include: the length of time a player is held for; the extent of the impact on their ability to move; the nature of the opponent’s efforts to impede movement; and whether the opponent is using both arms in holding.
A crackdown on holding has been promised before, but without any real impact. Webb says the key will be to approach any changes slowly and consistently. “This is not meant to be a six-week campaign, August and September, then we forget all about it,” he said. “If we went in like a steam train and gave every little bit of sort of contact then it would tell you it would be a six-week campaign. Because we would get told very quickly to ease off from what we’re doing. We have to take the game with us and we have to be credible. We have to identify those situations that do fall in line with the feedback that we had.”
Webb cited changes to the handball law in recent seasons as a model to follow. It is one of the most contentious laws and PGMO adopted a more lenient interpretation to limit the number of gamechanging decisions made off the back of subjective handball calls. Research by the Premier League found that 78% of stakeholders said they supported the approach taken last season and wanted it to continue.
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“That’s why we want to survey the game,” Webb said. “Because when I listen to the game [we can] make those tweaks where we think we need to to be better, to fall in line with those expectations. And I think we did that with handball pretty successfully.”
