It can be legit to play across like that if you're trying to settle yourselves down after an onslaught by just keeping possession for a minute or two, or to try to tire your opponents by making them run as you switch sides, but it can turn into a tedious and negative tactic, I agree. Good footballers (and managers such as Mourinho) need to remember that it's a spectator sport and those spectators, whether in the stadium or at home watching telly, are the people who make the game very rich. And they deserve entertainment, not half-hour stretches of negativity or bus-parking. I'd like to see a tightening-up of what happens at throw-ins and of how long a goalkeeper can keep the ball, two areas in which time-wasting is rampant. And I hate it when we get several substitutions in the dying minutes of the game. Interrupting the flow of the game in that way is completely against its spirit.   

And what's happened to Hazard? He doesn't turn up very often these days.