According to the BBC, only about 45 mins of footy on Saturday was actually played between the two teams. This is why apparently they want two halves of 30 mins. with the clocked stopped when the ball is not in play.

Really would love to see that rule, the football dinosaurs need to wake up to the cheating that goes on in games today. Old rules get exploited.

or we could have two halves of 45 minutes and stop the clock, don't see any reason or justification to lower the game time. If teams aren't Dyche fit then tough ****

If the ref had shown any interest in stopping West Brom timewasting from the first minute we'd have got a lot more in.

They came for a nil nil and stole a win. The time wasting from the first minute was ridiculous. The referee was far too lenient all afternoon but it's the Pulis way though. The sooner he's out of the game the better it'll be for everyone.

47 minutes of football we got on Saturday, spread over nearly 2 hours.

I'd be in favour of this rule.

Can you still get booked for time wasting?

I ask because I think Atkinson acknowledged it was happening at least half a dozen times by making a show of stopping his watch, but never saw fit to book anyone.

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Apparently Palace were the biggest time wasters last season.

These sort of proposed changes baffle me. Saturday was a perfect example of the problem - weak refereeing.

There is no need for a fundamental change to address the problem, there is simply a need for officials to prevent time wasting by booking the guilty parties. Atkinson was woeful on Saturday in this respect - Foster himself must have taken over five minutes himself, just taking goal kicks - no warning and only five minutes of injury time to compensate, when there were all those substitutions and a ref card.

Ensure referees act on the issue, problem solved.

agreenwood wrote:Can you still get booked for time wasting?

Yes...in the laws of the game a yellow card is shown for "delaying the restart of play"

On Saturday I was expecting to see 7 minutes added at the end and Atkinson blew it,,,firstly in game management of time, then in not adding the right amount on.

Personally I'd like it to stay as it is. I just think the referees need to clamp down on it more and start booking players as appropriate.

I mean Foster clearly got a final warning of Atkinson on Saturday and then carried on with no action being taken.

Also something quite amusing and I could be wrong I am sure Claret Tony will know if it's right. I seem to remember Mark Monington getting a 2nd booking at York for taking to long over a throw in, this despite the fact we were losing at the time.

If the game was played over two 30 minute halves, it is my opinion that this would encourage certain teams to break up play more to disrupt the flow of the game so more niggly fouls and needlessly kicking the ball out, after all you wouldn't want a free flowing team like Man City or Arsenal to get that would you.

I don't think there's much point waiting for 'refs to do their job' and that'll solve the problem. Players know exactly how far to push it, West Brom have almost created an art from it. There wasn't one particular moment on Saturday when anyone around me was screaming for a booking yet you knew, especially once they'd scored, the ball would rarely be in play again.

I'm not sure what the resistance to this law would be other than 'change is bad'.

When we played at West Brom last season there was a full complement of ball boys. As soon as they scored their first goal every one of them walked behind a corner flag and didn't return a ball for the rest of the game.

They have zero interest in entertaining the public.

As expected, WBA took 40 seconds for goal kicks, 50 seconds for corners and 15 seconds for throws. Atkinson failed to tackle throughout the match.

Only the refs and fa can control this. Looking at the figures it doesn't appear they are interested. The ref was awful on this point on the WBA game. If the fa want to improve the game the laws are already there, there is no need for a change just apply them!

How long did it take for Kanu to leave the pitch after his red card? The ref should have sent him off.

Vegas Claret wrote:or we could have two halves of 45 minutes and stop the clock, don't see any reason or justification to lower the game time. If teams aren't Dyche fit then tough ****

Players have not played a full 90 minutes ever (there has always been a significant amount of playing time lost to corners, free kicks and throw ins) - player fitness would have to improve by about 33% (so far this season there has been no more than 61 minutes of actual game time in a Premier League game) or they'd have to increase the number of substitutions to allow for player exhaustion.

Modern players are already supposed to be a lot fitter than past generations.

To get the full 90 minutes they might have to introduce three 30 minute thirds with 10 minute intervals at third time and two thirds time.

Caernarfon_Claret wrote:Players have not played a full 90 minutes ever (there has always been a significant amount of playing time lost to corners, free kicks and throw ins) - player fitness would have to improve by about 33% (so far this season there has been no more than 61 minutes of actual game time in a Premier League game) or they'd have to increase the number of substitutions to allow for player exhaustion.

Modern players are already supposed to be a lot fitter than past generations.

To get the full 90 minutes they might have to introduce three 30 minute thirds with 10 minute intervals at third time and two thirds time.

Aw, bless 'em.

TheFamilyCat wrote:Aw, bless 'em.

Good point - but if we are expecting players to do something (playing 90 minutes of actual in play time) they've never done before then something has to change.
It'll also mean Saturday 3pm kick offs finishing at about 5.30 pm - so something fans will have to get used to.

And as fans would be getting about 33% more action/entertaiment you would expect ticket prices to go up accordingly.

Wheras two 30 minute halves with the clock stopped would make matches consistant, not have some games having as low as 46 minutes of game time - and still have most games finishing just before 5 pm.

leem5ki wrote:Personally I'd like it to stay as it is. I just think the referees need to clamp down on it more and start booking players as appropriate.

I mean Foster clearly got a final warning of Atkinson on Saturday and then carried on with no action being taken.

Also something quite amusing and I could be wrong I am sure Claret Tony will know if it's right. I seem to remember Mark Monington getting a 2nd booking at York for taking to long over a throw in, this despite the fact we were losing at the time.

If the game was played over two 30 minute halves, it is my opinion that this would encourage certain teams to break up play more to disrupt the flow of the game so more niggly fouls and needlessly kicking the ball out, after all you wouldn't want a free flowing team like Man City or Arsenal to get that would you.

Billy Jones got a second yellow for time wasting taking a throw in during that memorable 4-3 win against Preston at Turf Moor in 10-11.

WBA corners were the biggest bugbear for me. They would all stand around in the middle as though someone else was going to take it then one of them would reluctantly wander over to take it. Extremely annoying!

I reckon had they played the time wasting tactics against the bigger clubs there would have been yellow cards shown.

The one that gets to me is the length of time goalkeepers seemed to be allowed to hold the ball before releasing it. In 1998 the '6 second rule' was introduced (part of Law 12) - "a goalkeeper in not permitted to keep control of the ball in his hands for more than six seconds". Longer means a indirect free kick.

On Saturday in the second half we timed Foster keeping the ball for just short of 30 seconds. This is an easy rule for the refs to impose - but why don't they!! About time now something was done on blatant time-wasting.

Another sign we re not seen as Premier whipping boys this term, think we'll have to get used to it at the Turf this season.

There is an argument that the 30-minute halves with a stopwatch proposal is really motivated by commercial considerations. American Football has a lot of breaks in play which apparently allows for numerous short advertisement breaks.

Broadcasters will try everything possible to squeeze in additional advertisements. Sky et al. do not, when announcing the games they are televising, tell viewers when the game will kick-off: they tell them when the build-up starts, a period which allows for numerous advertisement breaks. Just prior to kick-off now, an advert is sometimes squeezed in between the players emerging from the tunnel and the referee's first blow of the whistle. Half-time is essentially a case of how little game analysis 'content' can we get away with to keep people in their sofas - the broadcaster knowing of course that 15 minutes of non-stop advertising would be valueless, since most people would change channel or do something else. Indeed, I seem to recall reading that a problem for TV advertising is trying to get it it work for a generation which will just turn to a smartphone when an ad break is on. A great way to do this would be to play adverts when there is a break in play at a pivotal moment in a game (for instance, a penalty is awarded but the fouled player is now injured and the physios are rushing onto the pitch): since viewers would not know exactly when the game was starting up again, they might just persevere with an advert or two rather than risk missing whatever happens next.

In short: be careful what you wish for.

Even when the score was 0-0 West Brom were wasting time taking their own corners.As soon as the ref indicated corner to West Brom ,their players made little attempt to get into position. Just another tactic to break the game down and slow it up. This happened at all their corners - not sure that I've ever seen it employed to that extent before.More akin to American football than our beautiful game.

West Brom's tactics were a joke that's why they didn't sell all there tickets the fans won't pay good money to watch that not good but got the result they came for

WBA came and did exactly what we used to do under Cotterill.

Did nobody watch our game at Chelsea ? I don't think I've ever seen Heaton take so much time to take a goal kick !

Simple have a stadium clock, when the ball is not in play stop the clock. Start it when back in play and play 30 mins each way.

Pretty sure there'd be an issue with that akin to why they won't allow replays on the big screens