sport news IAN LADYMAN: Time wasting is robbing fans who pay a fortune after three minute ... trends now
In added first-half time at Goodison Park on Saturday, Chelsea won a penalty for a clear foul by Abdoulaye Doucoure on Ben Chilwell. It took two minutes and 10 seconds for the penalty to be taken and this is what happened in between.
Doucoure questions Craig Pawson’s decision and is joined by team-mate Yerry Mina. James Tarkowski arrives on the scene. For what reason, it is not clear. Mina begins to sledge Chelsea’s penalty taker Jorginho. Cesar Azpilicueta intervenes but is confronted by the multi-tasking Tarkowski. Reece James arrives and shoves him. Meanwhile, Mina’s insufferable journey has continued towards his own goalkeeper Jordan Pickford. Advice is dispensed (try and save it?) and Pawson, who has now run out of patience, books him. A minute and 10 seconds has now passed since the foul and while the fee-paying public await a resumption of play, this tedious series of mini and pointless confrontations has moved on. Azpilicueta and Tarkowski are still arguing and Mason Mount is on the periphery. Mason Holgate of Everton is also in the mix by now and is having some kind of discussion with James. Mina is still arguing with Pawson. Of course he is. Finally, the penalty area is cleared but still we have no play as Pickford has taken this as his cue to advance off his line and wave his arms at Jorginho. Pawson shepherds Pickford back to his line while the Everton goalkeeper talks.
Jorginho's match winning penalty on Saturday took three minutes and 10 seconds to sort out
Jorginho’s penalty, struck low into the left-hand corner, turns out to be the simplest part of the whole exercise and by the time a minute of celebrations have died down, play restarts. It has, in total, taken three minutes and 10 seconds for one player to kick one ball.
Four seconds after play resumes, Pawson blows for half-time meaning that a total of three minutes and 14 seconds have been lost to the game in that incident alone.
So all of this takes us straight to the heart of a theme of this column from last season. Namely, time-wasting and what to do about it.
Statistics tell us that last season the ball was in play for 55 minutes of an average Premier League game. This embarrassing fact has been noted by the league and they say they want change. The referees are also aware and they talked it through when they met for their pre-season chat.
The solution so far? To speed up throw-ins by having spare balls available when one goes out of play.
So no mention of booking players for time-wasting. No mention of punishing those who feign injury. No mention of the kind of nonsense witnessed at Everton on Saturday.
No mention of the ruinous and utterly disingenuous introduction of the five-substitute rule this season.
Yerry Mina's remonstrations with the referee caused delays to the Chelsea penalty at Everton
No, let’s have more balls. That will do it. If it wasn’t so pathetic, it would be funny.
At some clubs, it costs
