A former PGMOL chief executive has called for an investigation from the Premier League after Liverpool saw off Newcastle in a pulsating encounter at St James’ Park on Monday night.
It had been billed as a potentially explosive fixture amid the backdrop of the Alexander Isak transfer saga and so it proved, with five yellow cards being dished out by Simon Hooper, who sent off Anthony Gordon for a dangerous challenge on Virgil van Dijk.
Rio Ngumoha came off the bench to score in the 10th minute of stoppage time at the end of the second half, and OptaJoe revealed afterwards that the ball was in play for only 40.8% of the match, the lowest in a Premier League match since Stoke’s 3-0 win over Blackburn in February 2010 (40%).
Hackett calls for investigation into number of stoppages in Liverpool win
Speaking to Football Insider, ex-PGMOL chief executive Keith Hackett was distinctly unimpressed with the amount of stoppages in Liverpool’s victory at St James’ Park, in which three Newcastle players were forced off through injury and 32 fouls were penalised.
The former top-flight official fumed: “This is frankly an unacceptable stat – it fails to deliver value for money to the paying fans. I would recommend that the Premier League launch an investigation to determine where time was lost. Once they have the facts, they can then produce an action plan.
“They should explore and determine if the stoppages were tactical – given the strength of the opposition, did one of the teams take measures to slow things down?
“Delaying the return of the ball into play at throw ins, corner kicks, free kicks etc – a review can easily determine time lost at various restarts. Did the substitution process take longer? Was there a large number of injury stoppages? How did the referee interventions slow things down?
“Hooper is an official who likes to keep his interventions to a minimum and create a good game flow. I would suggest that he is not to blame, but clearly can greatly influence the amount of game-time by ensuring the appropriate amount of added time is applied.
“The game has a problem that cannot be overlooked – the Premier League must investigate.”
Newcastle v Liverpool appeared to be an outlier in terms of stoppages
The tone of the match was set inside the first 10 minutes, when Joelinton and Kieran Trippier were both fortunate to avoid yellow cards before Ryan Gravenberch (deservedly) entered Hooper’s notebook.
The number of free kicks awarded last night (32) does seem like an outlier rather than the sign of a trend towards excessive stoppages – as per FBref, 435 fouls have been given in the Premier League so far this season, an average of 21.75 per fixture.
The number of yellow cards also exceeded the early-season average of 3.4 per game, with 68 handed out across the first 20 matches of the campaign, and Gordon’s red card is one of just three to have been awarded thus far (FBref).
We can understand Hackett’s annoyance over the number of stoppages in Liverpool’s win on Tyneside – the clock showed 102 minutes when Hopper blew for full-time – although the evidence would suggest that it was a particuarly stop-start match rather than a trend-setter.
What we can say for sure is that the abnormally low ball-in-play time didn’t detract from the game as a spectacle, with no shortage of drama at St James’ Park as Ngumoha preserved the Reds’ 100% start to the campaign, a feat matched only by Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur after just two gameweeks.
To say that NUFC preferred to play an overly physical game would be an understatement…the ref allowed them to get away with two early rather brutal cheap shots on LFC with no adequate response and as so often then happens the team absorbing the punishment lashes out and receives a card/so the ref did not officiate against Newcastle the home team sternly enough/early enough….so yes that set the template/and LFC were involved in a very brutal game of Football and for the most part did not respond with enough enthusiasm/physicality themselves (other than Szoboslai) /hence for the majority of the game NUFC were the better (physical) side and relished that projection/LFC did not relish the game at all and were to be fair lucky to win.
Wirtz was for the most part disappointing/Kerkez was a shadow of his Bournemouth days…Konate made major errors/I am always thinking the worst when Curtis Jones plays (he is not consistent)/in the middle he did not put in. Dominik Szoboszlai was everywhere and had what can be only described from a LFC perspective a Herculean performance…Salah was quiet as was to a lesser extent Cody Gapko…the hype generated last game by Chiesa scoring was proven to be just that/hype….he is not at Premier League standard… I think Ekitike overall had a positive/good game, as can also be said for Gravenberch…the slowness of LFC in moving the ball positively forward was exasperating. Kerkez glaringly did not to my memory move the ball forward even once – but chose to turn back to his own keeper and kick the ball back every action/he looked to me unsure in his ability to impact on the game with any kind of forward ball whatsoever…which was a concern to watch…we again got out of jail…NUFC were on the day the better side!. YNWA.
Such a pessimist….or did you forget we came away with 3 points 🤮🤮🤮
Totally agree, that was a great summary of last night’s game.
Why don’t PGMOL look at the amount of Newcastle players rolling around in the floor pretending to be injured when 2 mins later they are running around fine, also holding their faces when they have never been touched. It’s so bad to watch these cheats rolling around like they have been shot, it’s a joke. That is what needs looking at, referees should ignore them or make them sit on the sideline for 10 mins, that would stop it
Newcastle were clinical in premeditated fouls and time waisting especially by the blond man babies in their midfield and the time added on came back to bite them KARMA 😂😂😂😂
Kerkez started the ball (forward) for the final goal, so don’t know what game you watched. Plus, he couldn’t do forward runs as, if you’re marking a player of Elanga’s speed, you can’t afford to give him too much space.
Very bad
Not one ball boy gave a ball to a Liverpool player, they just sat on the stool and watched the game until Newcastle needed the ball. Then they were up on their feet getting the ball straight away. Wrong, very very wrong.
I totally agree with this position because more than impress I was highly disappointed at the quality of that match