IAN LADYMAN: Time-wasting is ROBBING fans who pay a fortune, with the ball in play for just 47% of Chelsea's win at Everton… PLUS, so what if Jesse Lingard is well paid? Get off his back

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In added first-half time at Goodison Park on Saturday, Chelsea won a penalty for a clear foul by Abdoulaye Doucoure on Ben Chilwell. It took two minutes and 10 seconds for the penalty to be taken and this is what happened in between.

  • Doucoure questions Craig Pawson’s decision and is joined by team-mate Yerry Mina. 
  • James Tarkowski arrives on the scene. For what reason, it is not clear.
  • Mina begins to sledge Chelsea’s penalty taker Jorginho. Cesar Azpilicueta intervenes but is confronted by the multi-tasking Tarkowski. Reece James arrives and shoves him.
  • Meanwhile, Mina’s insufferable journey has continued towards his own goalkeeper Jordan Pickford. Advice is dispensed (try and save it?) and Pawson, who has now run out of patience, books him.
  • A minute and 10 seconds has now passed since the foul and while the fee-paying public await a resumption of play, this tedious series of mini and pointless confrontations has moved on. Azpilicueta and Tarkowski are still arguing and Mason Mount is on the periphery. Mason Holgate of Everton is also in the mix by now and is having some kind of discussion with James. 
  • Mina is still arguing with Pawson. Of course he is.
  • Finally, the penalty area is cleared but still we have no play as Pickford has taken this as his cue to advance off his line and wave his arms at Jorginho. Pawson shepherds Pickford back to his line while the Everton goalkeeper talks.
Jorginho's match winning penalty on Saturday took three minutes and 10 seconds to sort out

Jorginho's match winning penalty on Saturday took three minutes and 10 seconds to sort out

Jorginho's match winning penalty on Saturday took three minutes and 10 seconds to sort out

Jorginho’s penalty, struck low into the left-hand corner, turns out to be the simplest part of the whole exercise and by the time a minute of celebrations have died down, play restarts. It has, in total, taken three minutes and 10 seconds for one player to kick one ball.

Four seconds after play resumes, Pawson blows for half-time meaning that a total of three minutes and 14 seconds have been lost to the game in that incident alone.

So all of this takes us straight to the heart of a theme of this column from last season. Namely, time-wasting and what to do about it.

Statistics tell us that last season the ball was in play for 55 minutes of an average Premier League game. This embarrassing fact has been noted by the league and they say they want change. The referees are also aware and they talked it through when they met for their pre-season chat.

The solution so far? To speed up throw-ins by having spare balls available when one goes out of play.

So no mention of booking players for time-wasting. No mention of punishing those who feign injury. No mention of the kind of nonsense witnessed at Everton on Saturday.

No mention of the ruinous and utterly disingenuous introduction of the five-substitute rule this season.

Yerry Mina's remonstrations with the referee caused delays to the Chelsea penalty at Everton

Yerry Mina's remonstrations with the referee caused delays to the Chelsea penalty at Everton

No, let’s have more balls. That will do it. If it wasn’t so pathetic, it would be funny.

At some clubs, it costs up to £1,000 for a season ticket now and football has a responsibility to deliver more to its public.

An independent clock that stops when play stops is the most obvious answer but football doesn’t want to embrace a system used by both codes of rugby. I would also consider banning the use of substitutes — barring obvious injury — from 80 minutes onwards. The majority are used purely to waste time.

And after that, it is up to the referees to be stronger. This is not a problem of their creation but it is their responsibility to lead the march towards solving it.

At Goodison Park on Saturday the ball was only in play for an abysmal 51 minutes and 47 seconds of a game that actually lasted 110 minutes because of two serious injuries.

If Mina had bought a ticket to watch, I imagine he would have something to say about that.

Ball in play for 47% of Everton game!

The ball was in play for just 51 minutes of Everton’s clash with Chelsea. As there were 10 minutes of stoppage time in both halves, that’s just 47 per cent! Only two games had the ball in play for over an hour.

MATCHBALL IN PLAY TIME

Everton 0 Chelsea 1 - 51mins 47secs

Man Utd 1 Brighton 2 - 52:47

Leeds 2 Wolves 1 - 52:52

Newcastle 2 Nott’m Forest 0 - 52:58

Bournemouth 2 A Villa 0 - 53:15

Fulham 2 Liverpool 2 - 54:23

Tottenham 4 So’ton 1 - 58:14

Crystal Palace 0 Arsenal 2 - 59:33

Leicester 2 Brentford 2 - 62:17

West Ham 0 Man City 2 - 63:07

Jesse Lingard is receiving plenty of criticism after joining Nottingham Forest on a big salary

Jesse Lingard is receiving plenty of criticism after joining Nottingham Forest on a big salary 

Lingard is well paid. So what? Get off his back

Good footballers are allowed to earn good money but not, it seems, Jesse Lingard.

The former Manchester United player has moved to Nottingham Forest to restart his career and remain relatively close to family in the North West for whom life has been difficult.

Still, though, Lingard is castigated for a wage regularly referred to as £120,000 a week.

So here are two salient points.

Firstly, Lingard is being paid a weekly sum of £84,000.

Like it or not, that is a pretty standard Premier League wage that only rises if certain criteria such as goals and wins are met.

Secondly, the 29-year-old has spent his life at England’s biggest club and featured for his country in a World Cup semi-final.

Lingard is a good player who deserves to be paid as such. So what exactly is the problem here?

Scandal that United never play at 3pm 

Manchester United will not kick off at home at 3pm on a Saturday until January. Between August 27 and November 5, they are not scheduled to play a single game on a Saturday at all.

This is due to the demands of television, the fact they will play Europa League football on a Thursday and because of the winter World Cup.

What matters, though, is that supporters will lose out. The vandalism of our game goes on.

The Champions League final was marred by the treatment of Liverpool supporters in Paris

The Champions League final was marred by the treatment of Liverpool supporters in Paris

Why was it OK to insult Reds but not locals?

A final word on the events in Paris for the Champions League final in May.

An official present in the match control room tells me there was zero evidence on the monitors of ticketless Liverpool fans trying to gatecrash the event.

Meanwhile, the Paris police only felt compelled to use tear gas once Saint-Denis locals began to infiltrate the chaos.

At one stage, there was talk of a statement to clarify this but the police were by all accounts nervous about appearing racist towards black members of the local community.

It was ok to scandalously denigrate the visitors, it seems. Just not those who lived nearby.

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