‘Created a lot of anger’ – Martin Keown suggests new Premier League rule needs immediate revamp

Martin Keown has called for consistency with the new substitution rule as it caused controversy with Crystal Palace and Manchester City.

During the second half of City’s 4-1 victory at Selhurst Park, the hosts looked to bring on Oscar Mingueza for Anan Khalaili.

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However, Khalaili was deemed to have taken too long to make his way off the pitch, and therefore his replacement had to wait.

The Premier League has introduced a rule to help speed up the game by allowing ten seconds for players to go off at the nearest point.

Should they take longer than this, then the substitute must wait for at least a minute and until a break in play to come on.

It means Palace had to play with ten men for a period of the match before Mingueza was eventually allowed to make his appearance.

Keown questions if new rule needs reviewing

On commentary for talkSPORT, Joe Shennan explained the situation and said: “Well, rules are rules.”

“It’s intended to stop time-wasting,” he added. “No suggestion that’s what Palace were doing, they’re 3-1 down, but he took too long.”

Arsenal legend Keown claimed: “A minute feels like a very long time.”

“Does that need looking at?” he later asked. “I’m not sure of that. It felt like five minutes!”

City then made changes of their own towards the end of the half as Ayyoub Bouaddi and Ryan McAidoo were brought on.

Elliot Anderson and Rayan Cherki replaced them, but the latter took too long to enter the pitch in the eyes of Palace fans.

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Many of the home faithful booed and jeered as he made his journey off the pitch in apparent protest to their earlier sanction.

“The irony of this is that Palace fans are saying he’s taking too long to go off,” Keown explained. “He’s milking the applause.

“But the Man City subs are allowed to come on. It’s creating a lot of anger here.

Keown added: “That substitution has actually taken a lot longer than the Palace substitution.

“I think what we want is consistency. If you’re doing that for one set of players, you must do it for the other.”

City go top of the table

After narrowly beating Bournemouth 2-1 last weekend, City were a much more convincing side against Palace.

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Erling Haaland scored his first goal of the season on 17 minutes with an excellent looping header.

Rayan Cherki then scored either side of a Gianluigi Donnarumma own goal to ensure City were cruising en route to victory.

Haaland then added his side’s fourth and final goal of the night with six minutes remaining in south London.

City are now top of the Premier League with a 100 per cent record so far this season.