Why there are fewer stoppages than there used to be in the Premier League

I thought so too. Throughout the first three weeks of the Premier League season we were told over and over again that referees have decided to whistle for fewer fouls. They want games to flow more freely, we were told.

Anyway, English fans like to watch violent football, don’t they? Well, I don’t, but I accept that I am in a minority. Possibly a minority of one.

Many times during the last three weekends I thought I saw referees wave play on after kicks, pushes and pulls that previously they would have penalised with a free kick. I thought so, but I was wrong.

This season referees have awarded fouls at the same rate as last season – 20 per match. And last season was not any sort of historical low. Did I, did we, see what we were told we were going to see?

The funny thing is that over the previous few seasons there was genuinely a significant reduction in the number of stoppages in Premier League games, and none of us seemed to notice. It did not happen because of anything referees did but because of what players did.

Referees did not award fewer fouls, the ball went out of play less often. There was a progressive reduction in the number of stoppages in Premier League games, and it happened because play became more skillful. Not more violent, more elegant.

Over a decade the number of restarts in the Premier League dropped by ten per cent. There were 102 per game in 2011-12 but only 92 per game in 2021-22. The number of fouls punished in an average game was the same in the last season as in the first – but there were four fewer throw-ins, four fewer goal kicks and a decrease of one for both corners and offsides.

This season has been like last season - 92 restarts per game.

You might wonder if the fall in the number of stoppages is attributable to just a few teams led by Manchester City whose play now consists overwhelmingly of accurate passes and prolonged attacks. It is not. If they led, others have followed. There have been fewer stoppages in the games of every sort of team – those from the top, middle and bottom of the table.

We can bet on nearly all restarts so let us go through them briefly.

There are six reasons why play has to stop and restart – for a goal, corner, goal kick, throw, foul or offside. There are also kick-offs to begin each half, but I have not counted those because their number cannot go up or down – and, as far as I know, you cannot bet on them. You used to be able to bet on which team would kick off the first half, but I have not seen that bet recently.

The most common restarts are for throw-ins, followed by fouls, goal kicks, corners and offsides. The least common restarts are for goals. There were just under three per game in 2011-12 and there were just under three per game last season. Over that decade offsides per game dropped from 4.5 to 3.5, corners from 11.5 to 10.5, goal kicks from 19 to 15 while fouls remained at 20 and throw-ins fell from 44 to 40.

How does the Premier League compare with other top divisions in Europe? Elsewhere, too, there are fewer stoppages than there used to be, but still more than in the Premier League. Total restarts now are about 100 per game in the German Bundesliga and Spanish La Liga, 95 in the French Ligue 1 and Italian Serie A.

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