You had to know that this post was coming sooner or later, and what better time to do such a post when it just happened. This past weekend, Sheffield United tied Brighton and Hove Albion in a one to one match. This makes the 10th match that Sheffield has tied this season.
This is tied, no pun intended, for the third most in the Barclays Premier League and I just think it’s just utterly ridiculous. How can you have a major league sport end in so many ties, it just feels uneventful. I mean, out of 27 matches, 10 end in ties!
It’s so incredibly frustrating that the players can just walk off saying to themselves, we didn’t win, but at least we didn’t lose. Do you have any competitive nature in you at all!? Keep playing until there’s a winner! Leaving points on the table is something that Sheffield has mastered.
I do understand that the player’s are of course tired after a 90 minute match plus extra time, and then the allotted over time of 30 minutes, but ending important matches in a draw is just unbearable. Other low scoring sports hardly end in ties, and that’s because they adapt to overtime to increase scoring. For example, hockey takes two players off the ice in overtime to give more room to players to make scoring plays. Something almost ever sport also does is sudden death. There are way too many extra time goals that result in a tie yet again.
A tie should be a fluke, like it is in football. If it get’s to the point where no one is scoring, then it makes sense to end a regular season game like that because you don’t want to hurt the players or the next upcoming event. But to end nearly a third of your games in ties is excessive.
Just thinking from a fans perspective, imagine how exciting it would be if you just took off three players from each team in an overtime match. The amount of room players would have would not only create more opportunities to score, but also the freedom for players to be creative and really flash.
There could be more moments like this:
And this:
Then this:
The only thing that I like about ties in the premier league is how it gives the ability to get some points out of any game and how it gives the underdog a larger chance to get something out of a game. I also like how it allows for the standings to be so close, and for some crazy rankings and potentially end of the year standings. Other than that, it’s disappointing and a major let down. It’s the definition of anticlimactic.
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