There's a fairly recent saying that has passed into modern legend and it is... Manchester United never lose. They just run out of time. Well, it appears that the now legendary Fergie Time is something that gives them every opportunity to score, so that they can keep those losses to a minimum. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20464371
I think that we can assume that Mark Hughes is a firm believer in Fergie time after what happened in the Manchester derby a few years ago!
It's definitely nonsense. These stats seem to back that up as well. The interesting stat is Chelsea are getting hardly any added time for some reason. The other 'top' sides are all getting around the same amount
Indeed, that's the real point. Those extra minutes are obviously at the expense of lower sides because the researched teams occupy the top places. And actually, if you read the piece all the way through, the evidence does support the Fergie time myth, to some extent. When you consider that even averaged out, ManU seem to get an extra minute or so, when they are losing, it appears to be significant.
The story was on radio 4 last night. The researcher a Man U supporter said it was significant but was true for more than just Man U. Graham Pole was interviewed and admitted the pressure at grounds like Man U does cause refs to sub consciously count up wrong erring in favour of what the team at home needs.
They don't score the most stoppage time goals, but they score the most famous goals in stoppage time which people will remember!
A BBC World Service documentary snippet on the very subject of Fergie Time. Have a listen: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p010n7v5/More_Or_Less_Fergietime/
If you listen to the World Service broadcast the researcher mentions that the findings are statistically significant. To put that into some sort of perspective, if the researcher was talking about scientific evidence as being statistically significant, that would result in a hypothesis being proved. That's some significance..! Now, I'm not suggesting that the hypothesis of the existence of Fergie Time was in any way rigorous enough for science, but for the football supporters from smaller clubs it certainly gives substance to that funny feeling that the ref is giving the big team a chance to get a result.
Isn't Fergie Time what's added on top of injury time not just injury time in general? Atkinson who gave United all that Fergie Time against City only allowed 30 seconds extra after Everton had scored twice in injury time against United so yes, it exists but you just have to have a ref that is afraid of Fergie. The worst thing about the Everton one was that it was just as Everton had got the ball and were deep into United's half when (tw)Atkinson blew for full time.
I simply won't have Atkinson being talked about that way after the brilliant game he had today in our game! Unacceptable!
I also wasted ten mins of my life reading that article and there is nothing statistically significant in there that can't be easily argued the other way. Pointless.
