Kevin Friend announces 'tweak' to handball and holding approaches ahead of new Premier League season
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Updated 07/08/2024 at 22:14 GMT+1
The handball law has been a consistent source of controversy for decades in the Premier League. Kevin Friend has urged referees to practice more leniency when it comes to deflected instances of the offence. The former Premier League referee also announced that there should be harsher penalties for holding in the box incidents, particularly if the offence occurs away from the ball.
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PGMOL Select Group 2 (Championship manager) Kevin Friend has detailed the change in approaches officials across the English football professional pyramid will implement in the coming season with regard to handball and holding.
The former top-flight referee announced that a slight “tweak” to the officiating of handball offences will be made and stressed there will be no “clampdown” on holding in the box.
Friend acknowledged that there were soft spot-kicks given for handball last season, for example when Luton Town were awarded a penalty against Wolverhampton Wanderers in September 2023.
While nothing has changed in terms of the handball law itself, Friend said that more leeway should be given to deflected instances.
“Our approach regarding handball, there’s only a slight change and tweak into where we’re going with that,” said Friend via Sky Sports.
“So if a player makes a shot or a cross and it hits the player’s foot and it then changes its trajectory, changes the actual direction and clearly hits the arm that might be out naturally and justifiably, we’re not going to look to penalise that as a penalty kick.
“We saw some soft penalties last season for handball. So we’re basically looking for examples where it clearly hits the arm unjustifiably, hands above the head, away from the body to deliberately block the ball coming into the box or going into goal.”
It should be noted that a similar announcement was made in the lead up to the 2019-20 Premier League season, and that different leagues can advise different approaches for their officials.
With regards to penalising holding in the box, Friend emphasised the need for officials to allow for physicality to remain in the game.
But the 53-year-old was adamant that instances of unilateral holding inside the box that impact an attacker’s ability to play the ball should result in a penalty.
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“It’s by no means a clampdown or anything like that,” said Friend. “It’s what we did last season, but it’s more like approaches.
“I think one of the things that we love about English football with the Championship, League One and League Two is the physicality.
“We love physical elements to the game. We don’t want to take that out.
“We understand that teams do block before the ball is coming in. We understand that there’s going to be mutual holding from both sets of players; we’re not going to intervene with that.
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“What we’re looking at is the clear holding offences that impact the ability of the attacker to get onto the ball, or the clear impact on the ability of the attacker doing something with the ball.
“So if the defender’s actions are to deliberately bring the player down by holding him, sustained, impactful, then we’re going to penalise that whether that’s on the ball or off the ball.”
And Friend noted that although it may be missed initially by the on-field referee, the team of officials should come down harder on holding in the box further away from the ball too.
Friend said: “The more away from the ball, the more severe it has got to be. We saw a couple of examples last season of defending players rugby tackling attacking players 15 yards away from where the ball was.
“It’s very difficult on field for the referee but again we’re empowering, encouraging the referees as a team to understand the team tactics, what players are doing, how they’re setting up and actually identifying these little areas.”
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