ROLL out the headless-chicken gibes, English football is officially becoming even more frenzied. Players are running faster and farther during matches while growing less adept at passing to a team-mate. Purists on the Continent may scoff, but thrill-seekers around the world are likely to step up their worship of the Barclays Premiership on their televisions.

Data gathered by ProZone, which assesses a majority of Premiership clubs, reveals that the average number of sprints by these teams in league matches has increased by almost a half during the past two years, the figure of 1,699 last season comparing with 1,156 in 2002-03. The total distance covered by a team’s players has risen by an average of more than two miles per game in that period, from 67.5 miles to 69.8 miles.

The result is that players probably have less time on the ball and, perhaps in consequence, they are becoming more prone to giving away possession. While teams showed a slight improvement in this regard last season compared with two years earlier, the average tally of 190 successfully completed passes was well down from 226 in the 2003-04 campaign. Given the apparent greater urgency shown by teams, it is no surprise that they are entering the opposition’s third of the pitch more frequently. They achieved this an average of 55 times per match in 2002-03 but 73 times last season.

“It’s fascinating to look over the data from the past couple of years to see the way teams have developed their fitness levels,” Toby Rawlinson, the head of consultancy at ProZone, said. “The escalating demands of the Premiership have triggered an increase in the physical output from teams.”

ProZone uses 12 cameras from a bird’s-eye perspective and those pictures are synchronised with the regular video footage of games to allow measurements of individual player’s contributions to matches.

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