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An analysis conducted by Opta in 2012 found that, when Manchester United were losing, they had an average of four minutes and 37 seconds added time – but only an average of three minutes and 18 seconds when they were winning. It was just a little trick.”įergie time, it turns out, is not just cliche, but empirical fact. I didn’t know how many minutes but it gets across to the opponents and the referee. That’s why I used to go with my watch,” he told Clare Balding in 2014. Sir Alex Ferguson later admitted as much. The arbitrary allotting of injury time creates opportunities for intimidation of officials, and, through bullying and snarling, certain managers’ teams getting more injury time when they need it most. Intimidated officials and arbitrary added time Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United side often benefited from the arbitrary allotting of injury time (Getty Images) And it is deeply unfair for fans, who can be left with far less play in some games than others: like paying for a two act play which ceases after one act.
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It might also influence the results of other games: if, during the hectic Christmas schedule, say, one team is coming off a match with 45 minutes of effective playing time and the other off a game with 65 minutes of playing time, it will provide a significant advantage to the fresher side. This has profound implications for the results, too: it is possible, say, for a team to deliberately minimise the amount of time that a ball is in play, by using both time-wasting and tactics designed to break-up play. This is unfair on a basic sporting level: games depend on common rules, and yet one of the most fundamental in football – that a game lasts 90 minutes – is never adhered to at all. Empirically, Opta’s data shows that it is possible for a team to waste an extraordinary amount of time and get away with it. It is a seductive myth that time-wasters are always punished by the wrath of the fourth official. So some games have 26 more minutes of real match time – over 60 per cent more. Yet when Manchester City hosted Chelsea on Sunday, the ball was in play for 68 minutes and 21 seconds. When Stoke hosted Watford in a stultifying 0-0 draw at the end of January, the ball was in play for a meagre 42 minutes and eight seconds: less than half the 90 minutes that a match notionally comprises. Yet the divergence between games is remarkable. This season in the Premier League, the a verage amount of ball in play in each match is 59 minutes and 23 seconds, according to Opta. When it comes to how long the ball is in play, matches do not last remotely 90 minutes – and there is an extraordinary difference in the real length of matches. Ninety minutes is the obvious answer, of course. No one has a clue about one of the most fundamental features of a football match: how long a game should actually last. There is some science behind the decision about stoppage time – the notion that 30 seconds should be added for every substitution – but this is essentially of the crackpot variety. How long does a Premier League game actually last?