The Added Time Debate

[Lancet Fluke]

Are there any studies or figures that give the 'average' amount of time that the ball is actually in play in a game in the Premier League ?

Here you go. Below is something I posted a while ago. It is about the 13/14 premier league season but it is still valid as the difference between those two matches shows how teams that don't want to play as much football in a match can manipulate things to play crazily few minutes. It is 2017, how anyone can think it is acceptable when it could so easily be sorted with a change, I don't know.

"Vaguely interesting article on it here, particularly for the following bit of info (from the 2013/14 season). A difference of nearly 27 minutes "ball in play" time between two matches that season. Scandalous IMO:

"Over the last three Premier League seasons the ball has been in play on average for 55 minutes 52 seconds, 56 minutes 22 seconds and 56 minutes 34 seconds respectively. That means over a third of the running time is lost in one way or another.
This season in the Premier League the most the ball was in play was in Swansea 1-3 Tottenham and that was for 67 minutes 37 seconds. At the other end Stoke fans may have enjoyed beating Aston Villa 2-1 but they saw only 40 minutes and 50 seconds of actual football"


https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2014/mar/11/breaking-the-law-injury-time-referees "

 

[Millwallawayveteran1988]

Frustrating being at the game freezing cold and having to watch that. The ref was useless although he did at least give 5 mins.

That's not sporting for me. They can park the bus if they want but time wasting gets right on my tits. My throat is killing today from yelling at the ref. There were more "twats" "fucks" and ****s coming from my mouth last night than any other game this season, purely down to this blatant cheating.

 

[Bozzie]

Two things worse than a 250+ trip back home from a Wednesday night away match:
1. Losing in the 95th minute to the last kick of the game and
2. Knowing that if your team hadn't spent the previous 90 minutes wasting time and feigning injury then the match would have already have finished at one all.

 

[Aytoun]

Correct Bozzie - karma.

 

[Lancet Fluke]

problem is it's set up for abuse as a) time-keeping is subjective, b) different refs use different rules for classifying a stoppage and c) no referee is going to send off a keeper for time-wasting, much like the 6 second rule, shirt-pulling at corners and sending off rags for kicking their opponent in the nads nothing will be done, as even if one ref does try to do it correctly, the other 9 will not bother that weekend and that ref will be a scapegoat so won't bother. The yellow card for a keeper time-wasting is the most pointless punishment there is. Until we have a stop clock then nothing will change.

The yellow card relaitvely early on might have had an effect, he would have had to be quite brave/stupid to take the piss for the next 60 minutes when he's already on a yellow for time wasting. But that's the point, the ref was so clearly never going to give him that yellow, the keeper will have known that and I don't believe any other ref would have carded him either. They only deal with it right at the end to make it look like they have dealt with it when really they have not dealt with it at all. As you say, it is all so vague anyway. Time keeping is effectively a completely discretionary thing and it ends up with refs just adding on arbitrary amounts of time. I can't believe the whole thing hasn't been overhauled by now. I don't blame Southampton at all for doing it by the way. Why wouldn't they? It's the fault of whoever is responsible for the laws of the game for not giving us a modern method of time keeping.

 

[Eds]

Added time in the first half should have been at least four minutes and it was only two. In the second half there were five substitutions, Soares took just over two minutes to be treated and walk off and then we have Forster taking 35 seconds to take each goal kick and some throw ins were taking 25 seconds. They were lucky a minimum of five minutes was shown. IMO seven or eight minutes would have been more appropriate.

 

[Rolee]

if you're going to time waste then you have to accept you'll have to play longer added time as a result. If they'd hurried up they could have had a minimum of 3 mins and got a point. it was a minimum of 5, we scored 40 seconds after that. Could tell the refs feelings about it because he blew as soon as they kicked off

We scored 3 seconds after it. 95.03 on the clock when the ball hit the net.

 

[Puppet Master Silva]

There has to be an instruction from the F.A for referees to not book anyone for time wasting before the 80th minute. Every goalkeeper knows they can take the piss with little consequence, if you say to them early on one more time and it's a booking you could easily stop this obvious cheating. For whatever reason taking long stretches of time out of the game isn't a priority, but sending players off for celebrating with their fans is.

 

[Man_City_Loyal]

shouldn't time waste will always come back to bite you.

 

[Tricky Dickys Right Foot Shot]

Good to see Southampton fans crying about it!! Got what they deserved for the time wasting from 9 minutes in, to the 90th!!

Worse team I've seen us play against this season.... Wolves offered more than these jokers.