Brighton boss Fabian Hurzeler believes the rules need to be changed to stop Arsenal wasting time on corner kicks, speaking ahead of Wednesday’s game between the two clubs.
Brighton manager Fabian Hurzeler didn’t shy away from provoking upcoming opposition Arsenal in his pre-match media duties, accusing the Gunners of wasting time on corners and calling for stricter rules on getting the ball back into play.
“For me the main topic is make a clear rule for how much time you can waste for a corner, for a throw-in, for a free-kick,” Hurzeler said.
“It disturbs the rhythm of the game and there are no clear rules any more, how much time you can spend for a corner, how much time you can spend for a throw-in.
“No-one recognises it, but when Arsenal have a corner and they are leading, sometimes they spend over a minute just to take a corner.
“Therefore we just have to make clear rules, because then in the end we have a natural game time of 50 minutes instead of sometimes 65 minutes.”
Even coming at this from an Arsenal perspective, there is some truth to what Hurzeler is saying. Recent analysis in February determined that the Gunners spend longer than any other Premier League club on corners, at an average of four minutes per game.
By comparison, Brighton are relatively low on the list, at two minutes and 41 seconds per game.
Yet that’s just one of the ways that the ball can be reintroduced into play. Arsenal spend just two minutes and 15 seconds per game on goal-kicks, for example, the lowest total in the entire division.
Arsenal are also towards the lower end in terms of time spent on free-kicks, and roughly middle of the pack on throw-ins. Add it all up, and Arsenal are actually in the bottom half of the division in terms of time spent on restarts.
So whilst Arsenal’s corner kicks might waste a little more time than Hurzeler would like, the Gunners are dragging down the Premier League’s average time spent on restarts overall. To suggest it’s Arsenal’s fault that the ball is in play for less time on average is factually inaccurate.
But perhaps Hurzeler’s perspective is somewhat warped by the fact that Brighton are close to the best in the league for getting the ball back into play quickly.
Only Manchester City and Liverpool spend less time on restarts, so even Arsenal’s below-average time spent would seem high to him by comparison.
The good news is that we definitely won’t see the hosts trying to run down the clock in Wednesday’s game. Right?