Professional football demands entertainment but also rewards results, and that tension is most visible in how teams manage dead-ball restarts when protecting a lead. The Times has produced a detailed breakdown of how long each Premier League club takes across corners, direct free-kicks, indirect free-kicks, goal kicks and throw-ins while winning. The analysis ranks Leeds United as the club that, on average, takes the most time to restart when defending a lead.<\/p>\n
Leeds are particularly deliberate over throw-ins and direct free-kicks. Managers have noticed: Daniel Farke has famously complained about opponents\u2019 time-wasting, most notably after both games against Manchester City. At Leeds, long launches from Ethan Ampadu are a frequent sight in the final third, and Anton Stach has already rattled in three set-piece goals this season.<\/p>\n
Promoted Burnley also feature near the top of the list for slowdown when protecting a lead, a pattern that fits with clubs trying to preserve scarce advantages. Arsenal\u2019s presence among the higher-ranked teams will attract scrutiny given their position at the top of the table. The Gunners are unusually slow across several restart types and are the only team to sit in the top half of the division for time spent on all five restart categories.<\/p>\n
Fabian H\u00fcrzeler captured the frustration felt by rivals after a tight loss to Arsenal. \u201cOnly one team tried to play football,\u201d the young German coach sighed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI ask you one question,\u201d H\u00fcrzeler posed to assembled media. \u201cDid you see in a Premier League game a goalkeeper going down three times? You can\u2019t control these kind of things … therefore the Premier League has to find a rule.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arsenal\u2019s restart ranks while leading read: Corner 2nd, Direct Free-Kick 6th, Indirect Free-Kick 9th, Goal Kick 4th, Throw-In 8th. By contrast Manchester City rank: Corner 17th, Direct Free-Kick 2nd, Indirect Free-Kick 20th, Goal Kick 10th, Throw-In 18th. City, Liverpool and Chelsea are among the five quickest clubs at getting the ball back into play, alongside Brighton. \u201cNo one recognizes it,\u201d H\u00fcrzeler seethed, \u201cbut when Arsenal have a corner and they are leading, sometimes they spend over a minute just to take a corner.\u201d<\/p>\n
The issue has drawn attention at club level and from governing bodies, with broader rule changes under consideration ahead of the summer World Cup.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Leeds are the slowest to restart when protecting leads; Arsenal also rank highly in delays. 2025\/26.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11944,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[230,192,702,172],"tags":[1162,1583],"class_list":["post-11945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analytics-stats","category-arsenal","category-leeds-united","category-epl","tag-analytics","tag-time-wasting-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11945\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}