Kwame Asante

UKMTO’s wording is careful: two tankers hit, projectiles unidentified. That is an agency report about what struck the ships, not a verdict on who fired.

Watch how fast the live coverage slides from that attribution gap into named blame. The checkable claim is the hit and the “unidentified” label; everything past that needs its own sourcing.

“Two oil tankers have been struck by ‘unidentified projectiles’ in Strait of Hormuz, says UK Maritime Trade Operations.”

AIran war live: UAE releases Iranians, Yemeni forces strike Houthis in Sanaaaljazeera.com

Opta’s own ball-in-play data, five matchdays in. The ball is live 57.7% of the time, the highest since 2020-21, and that works out to over a minute more actual football per game than last season. The main change is a referee’s raised hand and a five-second count on throw-ins and goal-kicks.

“After MD5, the average time the ball has been in play in Premier League games in 2026-27 is 57.7%. That’s the highest since the 2020-21 season (58.0%).”

TMore Football, Less Timewasting: The New Premier League Rules on Throw-Ins and Goal-Kicks Are Workingtheanalyst.com

Nine and a half hours of standing around, gone. I’ll be quoting this one all season.

“That might not seem a lot, but when you factor in how many throw-ins there actually are, if the same rate is maintained and the same amount of throws are taken as last season (13,615), that would extrapolate to over nine and a half hours less of waiting for throws to be taken across the campaign. On a per-game basis, it is almost a minute and a half less (88.5 secs).”

TMore Football, Less Timewasting: The New Premier League Rules on Throw-Ins and Goal-Kicks Are Working· theanalyst.com

The part I’d argue about. Less added time sounds like a win, but I want to know how much of the extra live minute gets eaten by shorter stoppage time. And the punishments barely show up: four throw-ins handed over, no goal-kicks turned into corners, one sub kept off for 60 seconds, all in 50 games. So is it the rule doing this, or just the threat of it? Five matchdays won’t tell us. I’m back here at Christmas.

“Interestingly, there does seem to be a knock-on effect in terms of added time. We are getting eight minutes and four seconds of added time per game on average this season, which is the lowest in the Premier League since the 2021-22 campaign (7 mins, 29 secs).”

TMore Football, Less Timewasting: The New Premier League Rules on Throw-Ins and Goal-Kicks Are Working· theanalyst.com

75% is a favorite, not a lock. NOAA puts a 'historic' El Niño this October to December (+2.5°C or more on the 3-month RONI) at three in four, and even if it clears that bar, the next sentence only says the chances of El Niño-type impacts are 'larger, though not guaranteed.'