LONDON: Goal-line technology would have been brought into use 31 times in the Premier League last season writes KEIR RADNEDGE.

Richard Scudamore, the league’s chief executive, made that claim as what will be termed ‘Goal Decision System’ was shown off by Arsenal ahead of its use across all matches in the league this season.

The Hawkeye system – the company was preferred to the German Cairos – will have its first official test in a British competitive club match at Wembley on Sunday in the FA Community Shield which matches champions Manchester United against FA Cup holders Wigan Athletic.

Scudamore said: “It’s taken a lot of time and effort and money since 2006 but we’ve got here at last and it’s very exciting. It makes a very quick decision, in less than a second. If there were any doubt we wouldn’t be using it at all.

“There are seven cameras at each goal, and it’s a very quick decision – within a second all the officials will know. The technical system will tell the referees and it’s very simple – it either will or won’t be over the line.

There is no goal-line incident in the 21-year history of the Premier League that this system wouldn’t have been able to identify. There were 31 incidents last year that could have benefited from this technology. It’s been very rigorously tested and I’m very confident it will work.”

The Premier League season 2-13-14 will be the first in the world to use goal-line technology throughout all of its match schedule.

UEFA will not use goal-line technology in its club competitions, for two reasons. One is the opposition to technology of president Michel Platini, the other is that only a handful of grounds will have the technology available.

Platini prefers the additional assistant referee system which has been compared with goal-line technology but works to different match control parameters.

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