The historian Peter Hennessy has argued that Britain relies upon what he called a “good chap theory of government”, under which the precise wording of its parliamentary rules and even the absence of a formal constitution remain largely irrelevant so long as the people in charge of stuff have the right kind of moral fibre.
Football might never have been closely associated with good chaps, but it works the same way. The nation’s fields have always been prowled by genuine rotters, individuals who have thoroughly deserved such terrifying nicknames as “Chopper”, “Psycho”, “Bites yer Legs” and “Keano”, and the sport’s lengthy list of laws has only ever kind of governed them. There is much that remains beyond the control of referees, most obviously the passage of time.
Time-wasting is not a new issue. Nottingham Forest once attempted (unsuccessfully) to have the result of an FA Cup defeat overturned because their opponents had been at it so brazenly – and that was in 1885. Slightly more recently, the start of the 1971-72 season saw the so-called Refs’ Revolution, when officials were ordered to be more assertive after, according to the Guardian’s former chief football writer, David Lacey, “some teams developed wasting time to a fine art” (the problem being that referees asserted themselves in such a wide variety of different ways they had to be told to stop asserting themselves again).
In 1982 an all-star three-man committee – Bobby Charlton, Sir Matt Busby and Jimmy Hill – was tasked by the Football League with coming up with ideas to improve the game and homed in on time-wasting. Ironically its own time was being wasted, its suggested remedies being completely ignored. It is also an issue that in 1992 prompted the then Fifa president, Sepp Blatter, to produce a rare moment of genuine perspicacity. “The feigned injury is deliberately used by coaches, a form of time-wasting during which they can reorganise,” he said. “This is cheating.”
Sadly Blatter’s hands – and, indeed, his pockets – were too full for him to do anything much about it, and over the following three decades the problem has only grown. Meanwhile games themselves have shrunk. According to Opta, before last weekend the average Premier League match this season had lasted for 98 minutes and 14 seconds, including stoppage time. Of that time it calculates the ball was in play for only 54 minutes and 47 seconds, putting this on course to be the first season since 2010-11 when that figure has dipped below 55-and-a-half minutes. Last summer referees were instructed to come down hard on time-wasting. Well, that’s gone well.
Four Premier League games have lasted for less than half the time they were supposed to, clocking under 44 minutes of actual action. And though they might have been played in the same month and ended with the same scoreline the difference between the shortest top‑flight match so far this season (Aston Villa 4-0 Brentford) and the longest (Manchester City 4-0 Southampton) was a remarkable 24 minutes 39 seconds.
This is not just down to time-wasting – games involving dominant teams that prioritise possession are likely to feature fewer stoppages, and it is no coincidence that the five longest games in the Premier League this season all involved Manchester City, or that no Championship ground has been treated to more action than Burnley’s Turf Moor. But that alone cannot explain why fans at City’s Etihad Stadium are on course to end the season having witnessed just 22 minutes less league football than those at the New York Stadium in Rotherham, who will have sat through five entire additional games, an extra eight hours and 14 minutes, including stoppage time, of staccato soccer.
Rotherham are an extreme case. In their home game with QPR last month the ball was in play for just 40 minutes and 16 seconds, making it the shortest match in the top two divisions this season. The second-shortest was their visit to Birmingham. When they travelled to Watford they got their first yellow card for time-wasting in the 30th minute. At Turf Moor in November Burnley scored twice in the 12 minutes’ stoppage time the referee eventually awarded to win 3-2. “Were any players booked for time-wasting?” asked the Millers’ manager, Matt Taylor. “If there were four or five bookings for time-wasting I would have totally agreed with 10 or 12 minutes’ added-on time. I would have had no complaints. The fact that no players were booked at any stage for time-wasting suggests that the referee made up the number from wherever he wanted.”
And here lies the problem. Because no method has yet been found of doing the latter, and no amount of extra minutes can make up for a team transforming a game into a succession of elongated stoppages (besides, to force this season’s Rotherham side to play the equivalent of a full match the referee would need to add on a shade over 97 minutes’ stoppage time, which would present certain practical issues).
In 140 years no one has come up with a genuine solution and despite considerable thought – you’ve got to do something during all those stoppages – neither, I fear, have I. My favourite suggestion is this: after a team’s first offence the referee warns their captain; after a second they book the captain, and after a third they book everyone in the team, which would mean sending off the captain and maybe a few others, potentially causing the match to be abandoned. Obviously this would cause several brand new problems, and quite possibly some rioting, but I’d like to think it would motivate people to get a move on.
Time-wasting may be the abhorrent antithesis of the game’s Corinthian ideals but for as long as it remains possible one regrettable truth remains: any manager who encourages his team to let the game flow when doing so makes them more likely to lose is not so much a good chap as a foolish one.
