The Premier League has introduced a rule change mid-season, addressing concerns about an ‘unfair advantage’ for home teams. Premier League rules have been under recent scrutiny, with Nottingham Forest and Everton being penalized with point deductions for breaches of Financial Fair Play and Sustainability Rules. According to The Telegraph, there are concerns that home teams are gaining an unfair advantage due to the existence of the ‘multi-ball’ system, which allows ball assistants, as they are officially referred to, to quickly throw the ball to a specific player when the ball is out of play. For this reason, the Premier League has updated their rule to not allow ball assistants to throw the ball to players but instead place the balls around the corners. It’s been stated that as part of this rule, players must retrieve the ball from the nearest cone when they want to take a throw-in, corner kick, or penalty kick. The new rule aims to create consistency among clubs in the English football elite, as ball assistants will now be required to stay behind the LED advertisements when the ball is in play. There have been a number of incidents involving ball assistants in recent years, with the most notable being Trent Alexander-Arnold’s quick execution of a corner kick goal against Barcelona in the Champions League semi-final.