“His games would result in suspension and retraining in virtually every other League.” Arsenal v Watford 2 April 2016; Match Officials.

by Andrew Crawshaw

Firstly here is the Wall of Shame

Ref	Game			Weighted Score	Bias against (h/a)	Link to Ref Review
Craig Pawson	Stoke	v	Arsenal	34	5/95	Review Stoke v Arsenal
Lee Mason	Arsenal	v	Southampton	34	80/20	Review Arsenal v Southampton
Robert Madley	Arsenal	v	Swansea	38	93/7	Ref Review : Arsenal – Swansea, when is it going to start to even out?
Mike Dean	Chelsea	v	Arsenal	41	5/95	Review Chelsea v Arsenal
Martin Atkinson	Arsenal	v	Spurs	41	82/18	Review Arsenal v Spurs
Mark Clattenburg	West Brom	v	Arsenal	42	9/91	Review WBA Vv Arsenal
Anthony Taylor	Arsenal	v	Newcastle	48	9/91	Review Newcastle v Arsenal
Jonathan Moss	Southampton	v	Arsenal	49	22/78	Review Southampton v Arsenal

Following the Spurs referee review here is the updated Table of Shame

Wrong Important Decisions	Favouring Arsenal	Favouring Opponents
2nd Yellow Cards	1	40
Red Cards	1	12
Penalties	3	27
Goals	0	11
Total	5	90
Possible Cost in Points	0	25

Only two wrong Important Decisions against Arsenal so following my three quarter season review a game where we would normally have won, unfortunately one of the right decisions was to send off Coquelin, and although we had the better chances at 10 men v 11 we couldn’t quite find the winner.  Had either of the wrong Important Decisions been correct and it were 10 men v 10 or 10 men v 9 if both were correct, then I feel that we would have been able to find the winner so I am saying another 2 points robbed by the PGMO.

Before I go on to look at Saturday’s game – a few interesting (to me anyway) facts that I have noticed from my table giving the number of home and away games by each referee for each team.

Here at Untold we have for years recommended that referees are in charge for no more than 2 matches per club per season (ideally home and one away fixture) and that the number of referees needs to be significantly increased to accommodate this.  The worst excesses above that ideal are :-

Five Game Referee v Club Combinations

Mike Dean v Aston Villa

Mark Clattenburg v Chelsea

The following are Four game combinations

Atkinson (28 games in all) v Chelsea, Man City and West Brom

Dean (26) v Man United, Norwich and West Brom

Taylor (26) v Watford and West Ham

Clattenberg (25) v Man City and West Ham

Pawson (23) v Everton, Leicester (all home games) and Newcastle

Madley (21) v Man City, Sunderland and Swansea (but no Leicester games)

Jones (21) v Palace (all at home) and Man United

East (21) v Bournemouth and Newcastle

Oliver (20) v Everton, Man United and Spurs

Marriner (20) v Everton and Liverpool

Mason (17) v Stoke

Friend (16) v Sunderland (thats one quarter of all of his games!)

Swarbrick (14) v Swansea (thats nearer a third than a quarter of his games!)

Mr Moss (21), is the only referee with more than 4 games in total who has no more than three visits to any team.  The others are the ‘Makeweights’ – Attwell and Tierney who have four games each in total, Scott with three, Stroud with two and Hooper with a single game.

So far Arsenal have three visits from 7 referees (Atkinson, Clattenburg, Taylor, Pawson, Moss, Friend and Mason) two from 4 refs (Madley, Jones, Oliver and Marriner) one visit from Dean and East and we haven’t seen Swarbrick or the five Makeweights.  The referees we keep on seeing are pretty terrible and it would make a change to see some fresh faces, I fail to see how they could be any worse than some of the regular visitors.

Enough Waffle – on to Saturday

• Referee – Anthony Taylor
• Assistants – H Lennard and P Kirkup
• Fourth Official – A Marriner

Third time this year for Mr Taylor and all at the Emirates, His two previous games were against Man United and Newcastle and he was appalling in both, despite which we won both games.

Ref Review : Arsenal – Man Utd, more of the same

59% overall weighted score, bias against both teams 97/3, 5 wrong Important Decisions (second yellow, red cards, penalties or goals).  Min 45+1 Schweinsteiger should have had a second yellow card for persistent fouling, He made a further foul within a minute, Min 73 Fellaini should have had a second yellow card and Mr Taylor missed a second opportunity to dismiss Fellaini in Min 90.  In Min4 Schweinsteiger, fouled Gabriel following an Arsenal corner which should cerrtainly have been a penalty to Arsenal.

Ref Review : Arsenal – Newcastle

48% overall weighted score, bias against both teams 91/9, surprisingly only one wrong Important Decision when in Min 53 Colback dived incorrectly winning a free kick against Ramsey.  He should have had a yellow card, his second of the game.

Flags against the Assistants

I have a ‘flag’ this year against Mr Lennard in the Season opener between Liverpool and Bournemouth where there was a clear offside in the buildup to the Liverpool game.  Nothing since then so he seems to have learned from that mistake.

I also have three ‘flags’ against Mr Kirkup the first from Arsenal v Newcastle (see link above) when in Min 42 He should have flagged Mitrovic offside (close call but linesmen have no problen seeing an Arsenal Striker offside).  The second flag comes from Bournemouth v Arsenal in February when in Min 21 he wrongly flagged Sanchez offside.  The third was in the Arsenal v Swansea game in March when he wrongly flagged Monreal offside.

Last Season 2014-15 we had the ‘pleasure’ of Mr Taylor five times, of which only the first three were reviewed.  To be fair to him he got far better scores than this year, we had three good wins, 3 – 0 at home to West Ham, 5 – 0 at home to Aston Vills and 4 – 1 at home to Liverpool and two draws 1 – 1 away at Leicester and 0 – 0 at home to Sunderland.

Leicester v Arsenal (1 – 1)

61% Overall weighted score, bias against both teams, 7/93, Three wrong Important Decisions (all against Arsenal), Min 50 Hammond pushed Cazorla in the Leicester penalty area, should have been a penalty, Min 58 Moore should have had a second yellow card for a ‘professional’ foul on Sanogo and in Min 84 Hammond should have had a straight red card for deliberately stepping on Ramsey’s leg as he lay on the ground.  Two points denied by the Referee.

Arsenal – West Ham (Min 59 to final whistle)

Mr Taylor took over as referee in Min 59 following an injury to Chris Foy.  In his time on the pitch his scores were 73% overall weighted score, bias 83/17 and no wrong Important Decisions

Arsenal – Aston Villa

85% overall weighted score, bias against both teams 100/0.  A very good exhibition of refereeing – if only he was always like this.

In Summary

1. Anthony Taylor has the capability of being a very good Referee (our reviewers gave him 100% in the Norwich v United game in 2012/13) – unfortunately for us he rarely choses to display this skill in an Arsenal game.
2. His two games this year would result in suspension and retraining in virtually every other profession in the world.  Scores of 59 and 48% are not acceptable.
3. Mr Lennard has been ‘flag’ free in his three Arsenal games, so seems to have learned from his offside error on opening day.
4. Mr Kirkup has three ‘flags’ in five Arsenal games, not terribly good.  He really needs to concentrate in getting his offside decisions correct.
5. Mr Taylor is bad in determining what constitutes a yellow card, he is also terrible at keeping track of players making multiple fouls.
6. He is another referee who is unlikely to award a penalty to Arsenal, he has the PGMO curse of selective blindness.
7. Expect to see all of the usual tricks of the trade – inappropriate  advantages, phantom fouls, Watford being given freedom to foul whilst Coquelin will undoubtedly get a yellow card for his first foul.

COYG

From the anniversary files

• 1 April 2006: Arsenal beat Aston Villa 5-0 with goals from Adebayor, Henry (2), Van Persie and Diaby.

Danny Karbassiyoon’s book “The Arsenal Yankee” with a foreword by Arsene Wenger is now published.  You can buy the book…

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