A new study shows that Newcastle United are the worst culprits in the Premier League for time-wasting.
In the lead up to Manchester United’s Carabao Cup final win over Newcastle in February, Erik ten Hag labeled the Magpies “annoying” as he warned his players and the match officials about their time-wasting tactics.
United went on to win the game 2-0 at Wembley. It goes without saying that it was an incredible day out and we were able to prevent Newcastle from any time-wasting.
Back in February, ahead of the final, Ten Hag told reporters about the challenge match officials would face.
“The referees want to play effective time. [Newcastle] have the lowest in the league and they are quite successful with it,” Ten Hag said, as quoted by The Guardian. “So, it’s up to us that we get speed in the game but also we are then dependent on the refereeing as well.”
It was United’s first piece of silverware, but away from that, Newcastle manager Eddie Howe went on to hit back at claims his side is guilty of time-wasting.
Prior to United’s trip to St James’ Park earlier this month, Howe said (via The National News): “I think our first intention is to always play the game and we want, as I said after the game, we want the ball in play,” said the former Bournemouth manager in Tuesday’s pre-match press conference.
“I encourage my players all the time to get the ball back in play very quickly. We want to play at a high tempo and want to wear teams down physically. That goes against what was said about us.
“Of course, there’s been times in games where we have to manage the game. We have to use experience, we have to do whatever we can to get a positive result. I’m not saying we won’t do that either. Certainly that’s not our first intention.”
The Analyst has published data, courtesy of Opta, showing that Newcastle are the worst offenders for time-wasting in the Premier League.
You won’t be surprised to learn that if you go to watch a United game and you’re likely to see more minutes of action than a Newcastle game.
Newcastle matches average out at 52% (51.15) of total minutes with the ball in play for Premier League matches this season.
Their data finds that Newcastle take 37 seconds per goal kick, more than 3 seconds longer than any other team in the top-flight.
It has been obvious for some time that something needs to be done about time-wasting, and why not start by implementing stricter laws next season to improve the game?
We had more minutes added on to games at the World Cup in Qatar. That could be one solution to tackle it.
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