La Liga games often had around 10 mins of added time last season.Clock stopping prevents everything. Keepers getting cramp means any time wasted is added on. Presently, if players have to go off then they take all day to do so and come straight back after being "treated". More time wasted (as is now) by kicking the ball back out or launching it back to other side's defending corner flag to allow said player to return.
I don’t think the 6 second rule includes keepers “fannying around“ on the floor. It’s surely designed for when they are standing still looking to release the ball.
If a keeper catches a corner, it makes sense for him to keep The hall whilst his side get back into shape, unless there is a promising counter available.
The problem for the laws of the game is that they are black and white and the game has many nuances.
I think you’ve answered your own question.You’d be wrong if you don’t think that. The law is unambiguous. It’s 6 seconds from controlling the ball with his hands to releasing it into open play. Nobody is asking a referee to blow up bang on 6 seconds. So the law isn’t black and white in its interpretation. They are encouraged to show some discretion. However, routinely allowing three times and more the stated time isn’t showing discretion in my opinion. It’s just totally ignoring the laws of the game. And I see no reason why that has allowed to become the norm. Particularly as they stated they would be clamping down on time wasting this season. Yet there doesn’t appear to be any movement to encourage referees to clamp down on this particular form of time wasting.
The idea of actually stopping the game clock when the ball isn't in play has been suggested plenty of times down the years. The issue seems to be that halves would last nearly an hour each, and that TV (who seemingly call the shots these days) are dead set against that.
Although the points you make are somewhat valid, stopping the clock would eradicate more timewasting than it creates so it should at least be on the table.And teams would still waste time in order to slow down the other teams momentum and get time outs. When we played Palace away last season, in periods when City were dominate, Kouyate would go down "injured". The physio's would come on, the Palace players would have drinks, a breather, regroup and we would lose all the momentum we built up. It was an obvious tactic that had been planned ahead of time. There is also something more dramatic about added time, and if it was scrapped in favour for stopping the clock every time the ball goes out of play, I think football would lose something of its magic.