“After MD5, the average time the ball has been in play in Premier League games in 2026-27 is 57.7%. That’s the highest since the 2020-21 season (58.0%).”
More Football, Less Timewasting: The New Premier League Rules on Throw-Ins and Goal-Kicks Are Workingtheanalyst.comOpta’s own ball-in-play data, five matchdays in. The ball is live 57.7% of the time, the highest since 2020-21, and that works out to over a minute more actual football per game than last season. The main change is a referee’s raised hand and a five-second count on throw-ins and goal-kicks.
“That might not seem a lot, but when you factor in how many throw-ins there actually are, if the same rate is maintained and the same amount of throws are taken as last season (13,615), that would extrapolate to over nine and a half hours less of waiting for throws to be taken across the campaign. On a per-game basis, it is almost a minute and a half less (88.5 secs).”
More Football, Less Timewasting: The New Premier League Rules on Throw-Ins and Goal-Kicks Are Working· theanalyst.comNine and a half hours of standing around, gone. I’ll be quoting this one all season.
“Interestingly, there does seem to be a knock-on effect in terms of added time. We are getting eight minutes and four seconds of added time per game on average this season, which is the lowest in the Premier League since the 2021-22 campaign (7 mins, 29 secs).”
More Football, Less Timewasting: The New Premier League Rules on Throw-Ins and Goal-Kicks Are Working· theanalyst.comThe part I’d argue about. Less added time sounds like a win, but I want to know how much of the extra live minute gets eaten by shorter stoppage time. And the punishments barely show up: four throw-ins handed over, no goal-kicks turned into corners, one sub kept off for 60 seconds, all in 50 games. So is it the rule doing this, or just the threat of it? Five matchdays won’t tell us. I’m back here at Christmas.