The Problem of Time Wasting
Tick tock.
Football fans will criticise other sports for their stop-start nature. They don’t flow in the same way, they can be too sterile. A series of events, rather than end-to-end, continuous chaos.
Except that this is what football has become in the Premier League in 2026. “There are so many other games, especially currently in football, that are not, in my opinion, a joy to watch anymore,” Arne Slot said in November. “It’s become more and more time wasting.”
Supporters spend so much money to follow their team, through tickets and television subscriptions, yet see so little play in return. In terms of pounds per minute, you’d get better value from a dodgy premium rate phone line.
Thanks to the data on the 365Scores website, we can now see how Liverpool’s matches have been affected by time wasting this season. To give you an extreme example of the statistics available for review, here’s a screenshot from the page for the Reds’ 3-2 win at Newcastle back in August.
The numbers are extraordinary. The ball was in play for less than 45 minutes in a match that ran to over 109. In other words, the clock was ticking for over an hour in which absolutely no football took place.
There were 100 stoppages in play. Referee Simon Hooper, he of the good process, signalled 13 minutes of stoppage time and played on for 19:23, but the ball was only active for barely half of the announced added time.
Newcastle took an average of 69 seconds per free-kick, 43 for each corner, 32 for their goal kicks and 24 per throw-in. The latter is taking longer on average this season than in any of the preceding nine, but the Magpies still took about six seconds per throw above that rate.
The Reds played their part in the time wasting - it’s impossible not to - though aside from using up 47 seconds on their one corner, their average was shorter for the three other types of restart listed.
Despite this being Liverpool’s shortest league match in terms of how long the ball was in play, other games saw more stoppages. Some saw wider gaps between the wasted time totals on each side. There have even been matches in which the Reds were more culpable for it than their opponents. The contrast between the figures for the Premier League and Champions League is razor sharp.
