In recent years, the footballing authorities have had a big job on their hands to decide how the implementation of VAR was going to impact the rules of the sport moving forward. That is also true in the Premier League, where there have been a number of high profile officiating controversies in recent times.
That is something that is likely to continue for the foreseeable future, with suggestions that a sin bin could now be introduced into the sport.
Under a new rule proposal, football would introduce a ten minute sin bin in order to punish cynical fouls and dissent. It will now be decided what levels to test this law at, although it has been said that we could see it in the likes of the Premier League as soon as early as next season.
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Paul Merson concerned suggestion to use sin bin in Premier League
This would certainly be quite the change to the sport, although some would suggest it is needed in order to stamp out cynical play.
However, not everyone is convinced by the proposal.
Speaking to Sky Sports, former Arsenal star Paul Merson shared his worry that the use of a sin bin would take away from the spectacle on show in the Premier League.
So they want to bring in sin bins. Sin bins? Pathetic. In rugby union, you go down to 14 players, the other team's looking at scoring seven to 10 points. It's a massive advantage. A massive advantage.
You put someone in the sin bin in football for 10 minutes, you're killing the game. You'd get 10 players sitting behind the ball the whole time, it'd be the most boring football ever. It's an absolute waste of time, a waste of time.
Everybody loves the Premier League, you have a shot at one end and there's a corner up the other end 30 seconds later. That just goes out the window for this 10 minutes, the team with the man down have got no choice but to sit behind the ball.
All they'd be doing then for that 10 minutes is taking their time over taking a throw-in, they'll take a goal kick, they'll buy a foul, and it'll just grind out the worst 10 minutes you could imagine.
It would be interesting to see how a sin bin would affect the dynamics of a top level match, although Merson may have a point that it would cause teams to be massively defensive during the ten minutes they are down a player. As well as that, the officials would have to ensure that they could not drain the clock by time wasting.
The Premier League have been a tad hesitant to introduce such big changes in the past, meaning they could well push back against suggestions in this area.
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