Yes I know we played very little football - a total lack of creativity against a team that came to spoil.
In the match thread I expressed my frustration that the Ref only awarded 7 minutes added time at the end of the 2nd half. Whilst there were 8 min 6 secs eventually added, from studying the recording, it should have actually been 10 min 5 secs. That research, however, offered insight into another aspect - how much time the ball is actually in play.
Of 53 mins 6 secs 2nd half duration, the ball was in play for 22 mins 45 secs. It was not in play for 30 mins 21 secs. There were a staggering 69 interruptions during the course of the half.
In this day and age and with technology so readily available, surely there has to be a way to guarantee a certain number of "in play" minutes - even if it is only a minimum of say 30 mins per half.
The fact we probably wouldn't have scored if we played 'til midnight is neither here nor there!
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A rule change which bought in sin bins for time wasting might help. All teams do it so I dont blame Preston albeit it was frustrating.
Yes, we were very poor today, but what chance did we have of building any kind of momentum, attacking play, or pressure, when the ball was hardly in play?
It’s things like this that they also have to protect the integrity of the game. Why are people paying out so much, travelling for hours, just to have the game ruined like it was today? You can excuse poor performances and not being at it sometimes, it’s rare for a Bowyer side, but when it’s such little football anyway, it makes it ridiculous.
It will also help with the flow of the game. I've always felt that it's weird that a 'block' of time is added onto the end of a match when those missing minutes happened at varying different times & varying different stages of play. Eg. You might have just scored & the momentum is with you. A player is injured (like their player today) and the game is stopped for 3 minutes. Once restarted the game has 'died' a bit & your momentum is lost. However, when that 3 minutes is added at the end of the game(along with other stoppage time) you might be hanging on & the opposition has, say, 5 mins of 'injury time' in which to press for a winner.
The problem with this is outside professional football where the ref wouldnt have the same time control...
Unfortunately this has been happening for years and years.
From the BBC in August 2017:
Premier League: Is time-wasting leaving fans short-changed?
Most of the articles I've found seem to be from 2017 or earlier but there's this, from SportBible in Oct-18:
Of the 90 minutes plus injury time at the Cardiff City team, 48 minutes was lost - with a good chunk of the delays and stoppages coming from Cardiff skipper Sean Morrison taking 20 throw ins and wasting a total of eight minutes.
and this from the CIES Football Observatory (Dec-18), which is a study of the average effective time of games in 37 European competitions:
Included in this study are a few second-tier competitions, including the Championship. Feirense is mentioned above as the side with the worst "effective time" but it's interesting to note who is second-last on this list ...
Not sure if it was the ref or us that stopped though, but sure enough they were all back in position by the time we took it.
Regardless if it was the same call it was a ludicrous decision from the referee, the Preston player wasnt even on the pitch so we had every right to get on with the throw in - Instead he kept us waiting until they were able to continue
I guess had the ref allowed play to continue then player in question would have rolled on the pitch laying there motionless
You clearly have too much time on your hands (forgive the pun).
I think Rugby and Football both have a problem with 'dead-time' , Rugby has tried to deal with this a little, but still has a big problem with the amount of time used in game-management and surrounding scrums (the 20 minute scrum at France v Wales a couple of years ago a prime example).
As you say, Preston came to spoil, some people are saying they could well end up with promotion as they are 'efficient' - but give me football over that turgid stuff any day.
So four stoppages of a minute never add up to four minutes extra time in referee land!
I don't think the clock should be stopped for "normal" incidents such as throw ins, goal kicks corners etc. These typically take about 20 - 30 seconds. Although the ball is not in play, the game is not actually "stopped" and the throw or kick can be taken at any time. Even in American Football the clock does not stop just because the ball is not in play!
But I do think the clock should stop whenever the referee actually "stops" the game for VAR, injury, substitution, to line up a wall or book a player or to allow for goal celebrations. (basically whenever a player would probably be booked if he tried to restart the game before hearing the whistle).
I would also allow referees to indicate they want the clock stopped if they think a player is time-wasting - usually after about 30 seconds - or if the ball is not thrown back by the crowd - or anything else that holds the game up. This is at the discretion of the ref to decide.
My guess is that this would typically extend the actual time for each half to an hour so it might be better to start with 40 rather that 46 (sic) minute halves.
There are also times where the ball is only in play for about 4 seconds between long stoppages.
This anti-football just has to stop, they need to do something because it ruins our game.
I’d be more than happy with 30 minute half with the clock stopped each time the ball is out of play.
Just another example... The average price of a paying adult at Chelsea is £66.25, that means on average, they’re paying around £1.15 for every minute the ball is in play.
Fans are definitely getting short changed.