Hull City’s Matt Crooks and Aston Villa’s Matty Cash have become the first players to receive a one-match suspension in the 2025-26 Premier League season after accumulating five yellow cards.
Crooks will miss Hull City’s upcoming trip to Arsenal following a yellow card against Ipswich Town over the weekend, while Cash will sit out Aston Villa’s fixture at Manchester United after being booked for a foul against Fulham.
Under the league’s disciplinary rules, players receive an automatic one-match ban if they accumulate five or more yellow cards before the completion of their team’s 19th league match of the campaign.
Currently, six other players are on the brink with four bookings after nine match rounds. These players must avoid a further yellow card before the halfway mark of the season to prevent an automatic suspension.
Once the 19th match threshold is passed, the suspension criteria rise to ten yellow cards. Any player who reaches this mark before their club’s 32nd league game of the season will face a two-match ban.
Beyond the ten-card limit, further disciplinary thresholds are set at fifteen and twenty yellow cards.
Accumulating fifteen yellow cards results in a three-match suspension. For players who reach the twenty-card threshold, the length of the ban is determined by an independent regulatory commission.
These accumulation thresholds do not reset during the season and remain in effect until the conclusion of the Premier League campaign.
Similar yellow card suspension thresholds are applied across the EFL divisions, including the Championship, League One, and League Two.
However, because clubs in these divisions compete across 46 league matches rather than the Premier League’s 38, players must avoid reaching ten yellow cards before the end of their 37th league match to prevent a two-game ban.
In these lower divisions, yellow card tallies are reset at the end of the regular league season, and bookings received during the play-off matches are not included in the calculation.