The Premier League will have a different look when the season starts Friday. Here's what's changed
The Premier stands still.
For the 2024‐25 season starting on Friday, there are five newly hired managers, around $1.6 bil‐ lion worth of new players (and counting), new offside technology, updated financial regulations and a tweaked match schedule.
League rarely
A quarter of the coaches will be taking charge of a Premier League game for the first time, with Liver‐ pool ( Arne Slot ), Chelsea ( Enzo Maresca ) and Brighton ( Fabian Hurzeler ) all having new man‐ agers and both Southampton (Rus‐ sell Martin) and Ipswich (Kieran McKenna) gaining promotion with managers owning no top‐flight ex‐ perience. Throw in Julen Lopetegui being the new guy at West Ham after 4 1/2 years of David Moyes at the helm and Steve Cooper replac‐ ing Maresca at Leicester, and the dugouts will look different this sea‐ son. 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 posses‐ sion game.
The Premier League's 20 clubs have spent as much on new play‐ ers in this transfer window as those in Spain, Italy and Germany combined, according to transfer‐ markt.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 ($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 Man‐ chester City, Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea are expected to weigh in. City (Sav‐ inho) and Arsenal (Riccardo Calafiori) have only made one new signing so far and Liverpool hasn't made any. Come the end of trans‐ fer deadline day on Aug. 30, don't be surprised if Premier League clubs have spent way more than $2 billion — even if most are bal‐ ancing the books with sales be‐ cause of the league's sterner financial rules.
SEMI‑AUTOMATED OFFSIDES
Expect offside decisions to be reached much quicker in the Pre‐ mier League this season. The com‐ petition is introducing semi‐automated offside technol‐ ogy for the first time, with the new system set to be launched during the first half of the season. Multi‐ ple cameras will track player movements and record data points on parts of the body that are relevant for an offside deci‐ sion. Data is processed with artifi‐ cial 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 Champi‐ onship. On Tuesday, the league launched an account on the social platform X, dedicated to offering live refereeing and VAR clarifica‐ tions from all matches this season. "For the first time, the social media account will provide near‐live ex‐ plainers and updates on opera‐ tional and officiating matters for every Premier League match," the league said.
Last season in the Premier League was notable for some clubs, like Everton and Notting‐ ham Forest, receiving points de‐ ductions for breaking the competition's profitability and sustainability regulations, which are now being more strictly ap‐ plied. This coming season is the final year of those regulations, with two new forms of spending caps being trialed ahead of their introduction from the 2025‐26 season. Teams in England's top di‐ vision will trial a "Squad Cost Rules" system, which will limit spending on players to 85% of a club's soccer revenue and net profit or loss on player sales. A sec‐ ond system called "Top to Bottom Anchoring" limits — or anchors — spending to a multiple of the low‐ est 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 sus‐ tainability and the competitive bal‐ ance of the Premier League." "Obviously we want to move to a new system that people have confi‐ dence in and can comply with," Pre‐ mier League CEO Richard Masters told the BBC on Tuesday, "and move away perhaps from normal‐ izing 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 win‐ ter break for clubs this time, with the season starting later, to give players more time to recover from interna‐ tional 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.