Football is back: what’s new in 2015-16 The Times Sam Dean

Friday night football
The new season will give fans their first taste of Premier League football on a Friday night after a planned English Defence League march in Walsall next Saturday forced the league to reschedule Aston Villa’s first home game of the campaign against Manchester United. When the new TV deal comes into force for the 2016-17 campaign, there are expected to be about ten Friday night games.

Changing offside rules
New guidelines for referees and their assistants to follow say that “a player in an offside position shall be penalised if he makes an obvious action which clearly impacts on the ability of an opponent to play the ball”. For example, a goal can be disallowed if a player in an offside position tries to head a goalbound cross, even if he makes no contact with the ball.

Champions League on BT
Steven Gerrard will be flying back from Los Angeles to join Gary Lineker, Glenn Hoddle and Rio Ferdinand on BT Sport’s Champions League coverage after the broadcaster paid £897 million for a three-year deal for the exclusive rights to show the competition and the Europa League.

Goodbye Conference, hello National League
This will be the first season of the National League, which is the new name for the fifth and sixth tiers of English football, formerly known as the Football Conference. Sponsors Vanarama have kept hold of the naming rights, so the competition will now be officially called the Vanarama National League. It has launched NLTV, its own broadcasting company to increase coverage.

Touchline code of conduct
The FA has introduced a new code of conduct, to come into effect immediately, for managers and coaches. The code features two levels of punishment: an initial warning for actions such as persistent verbal abuse, and an FA charge for more serious breaches of the code, which would also see managers banished to the stands. “A bit of the soap opera is good,” Richard Scudamore, the Premier League chief executive, said. “Clearly, if it oversteps the mark and gets into the unedifying category it needs to be dealt with.”

Prime-time Football League
Channel 5’s deal with the Football League brings an end to the BBC’s Football League show, and also means that highlights from the second, third and fourth tier of English football will be aired at 9pm on Saturday nights, before Match of the Day, instead of the usual time of midnight.

Retrospective bans for feigning injury
Any player who is retrospectively found to have tried deliberately to deceive officials by feigning an injury could now be banned upon reviewing video footage. If a red card was shown to his opponent for violent conduct (for example if the player found guilty of deception had pretended he was elbowed in the face and his opponent was dismissed), it would have to be rescinded before any ban could come into place. As part of the FA’s tightened disciplinary rules, incidents missed by referees in matches could now be analysed by a panel of former referees.

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/sport/...cle4521050.ece