Arsenal v Fulham: the referee and the influence he will bring to the game

 

 

 

• Arsenal v Fulham: the PGMO is blown wide open. Now about those lawyers, guns and money
• Arsenal v Fulham. Send lawyers, guns and money

by Bulldog Drummond

As we know the referee for this match is Paul Tierney and thanks to WhoScored we can see just how well he does in terms of balancing the way he treats the home side with the way he treats the away side.

 

Referee	Games	HomeWin%	AwayWin%	Draw%
Stuart Attwell	25	72.0	12.0	16.0
Robert Jones	26	65.4	26.9	7.7
Peter Bankes	21	61.9	4.8	33.3
Michael Oliver	30	60.0	23.3	16.7
Simon Hooper	29	55.2	17.2	27.6
Paul Tierney	30	50.0%	30.0%	20.0%
Andy Madley	24	45.8	29.2	25.0
David Coote	21	42.9	33.3	23.8
Anthony Taylor	30	33.3	43.3	23.3
Craig Pawson	21	33.3	47.6	19.0

 

So as we can see from last season’s figures the referees the PGMO [no link available as they don’t have a website] put out had home win records ranging from 33.33% up to 72% – a range that is outside all the normal limits.  All referees except two oversaw matches with a home-team advantage.  Indeed all clubs had a home-team advantage except one (Southampton), in the sense of getting more points per home game than per away game.   For example, Manchester City got 2.74 points per home game and 1.95 per away game.   Arsenal got 2.37 points per home game and 2.05 points per away game.

But as we have seen from many different analyses, during lockdown when the crowds were not at games, this benefit disappeared.  It turns out (the experiments have shown) to be generated by the crowd noise influencing the referees.  Here are last season’s figures from Soccer Stats.

 

GPh	GPa	Pts	Points Per Game		Home advantage
					home	away	Difference
2	Arsenal	19	19	84	2.37	2.05		+0.32
10	Fulham	19	19	52	1.53	1.21		+0.32

 

At least if nothing else this shows that the crowd has a part to play (even though if referees were doing their jobs properly they wouldn’t have).

But this is a case where if Mr Tierney performs as usual, things PGMO-ish will work in our favour and we should see Arsenal win.

Of course what makes these referee figures truly shocking is not just the fact that the difference between home and away wins exists, when it would not do if there were no crowd noise influencing the referees, but the fact that the data is there and yet the media utterly refuses to report in.

Another fact we can also notice from last season is the range in the numbers of fouls per game and fouls per tackle between the most utilised referees.

In terms of fouls per game David Coote is top of the league and Paul Tierney is at the foot, for those referees who have had over 20 games in the last season.  The difference between the two in terms of fouls is over 25% – which is to say Coote gives out over 25% more yellow cards across the course of a season than Tierney.

But when it comes to yellow cards the difference is much greater.  Peter Bankes gives out over 49% more yellow cards than Michael Oliver per game.    Given the fact that PGMO utterly refuses to introduce the most obvious and reasonable rule that no referee should see the same team more than twice in a season, this means that clubs with lots of Bankes’ games are being penalised in terms of losing players to suspension much more than clubs with lots of Oliver games.

In short anyone with a wish to manipulate the league table from within PGMO merely has to give one team Bankes and the other team Oliver to help matters along.

 

Referee	Games	Fouls pg	Fouls/Tackles	Yel pg
4.David Coote	21	23.48	0.73	3.67
6.Andy Madley	24	22.71	0.70	3.54
8.Robert Jones	26	22.81	0.68	4.12
11.Craig Pawson	21	23.90	0.66	3.76
12.Peter Bankes	21	23.05	0.66	4.33
14.Michael Oliver	30	21.33	0.63	2.90
16.Stuart Attwell	25	20.12	0.61	3.24
18.Simon Hooper	29	20.66	0.59	3.45
19.Paul Tierney	30	20.97	0.58	3.80

 

When we combine this with the issue of the huge range of of fouls per yellow card that we see between clubs (between 4.7 and 10.5 fouls per yellow card as shown in our last analysis) and what we find is that which referee each club gets is having a significant influence both on individual games and in terms of the way the team is able to progress through the season with a full complement of players.

In short if you want to know who runs English Premier League football, then PGMO has to be one of the participants.  If one wanted to reduce their influence significantly, only one change is needed: to ensure as we have noted so very many times, that no referee sees the same team more than twice – once at home and once away.   It is so easy one wonders why they simply don’t do it.