Manchester City v Arsenal: the referee, the bias and the team

 

 

• Why are we seeing more goals per season in the Premier League?
• Manchester City v Arsenal: a comparison of dips.

Referee: Anthony Taylor.
Assistant Referee: Gary Beswick.
Assistant Referee: Adam Nunn.
Fourth Official: Thomas Bramall.
Video Assistant Referee: Jared Gillett.
Additional Video Assistant Referee: Darren Cann.

Ahead of this game I thought it might be interesting to look at the comparative figures of the six referees most used by PGMO in a season – including of course Anthony Taylor who we have for the Manchester City / Arsenal game.

And at the foot of each table I have shown the variation between the referee with the highest statistic and the ref with the lowest.

For fouls and fouls-per-tackle (with figures provided by Who Scored.in this regard) the variations are 15% and 19% which I would suggest is not unreasonable for a fast moving game in which decisions have to be made immediately.  But the variation in the number of yellow cards handed out is 42%, and surely that cannot be good for the game.

In essence, how many cards a club gets depends in part on which referee oversees most of its games.

In effect it means that among these most experienced referees who are overseeing all the top games in the league, clubs will enter a game knowing that under Robert Jones they are an astonishing 42% more likely to get a card than under Stuart Attwell.

 

Referee	Games	Fouls pg	Fouls/Tackles	Yel pg
Michael Oliver	30	21.33	0.63	2.90
Paul Tierney	30	20.97	0.58	3.80
Anthony Taylor	30	19.87	0.57	3.80
Simon Hooper	29	20.66	0.59	3.45
Robert Jones	26	22.81	0.68	4.12
Stuart Attwell	25	20.12	0.61	3.24
Range		15%	19%	42%

 

Of course, it can be argued that Premier League football is a fast moving game with decisions made on the spot, but now we have VAR, as well as all these years of experience, and yet still one top referee gives out 42% more cards than another top referee.

That figure is of course not published anywhere else, presumably because either the media think that us football goes are too thick to understand percentages and their implications, or because they know about this and want to keep the numbers hidden – probably at the PGMO bequest.

But let us move on to Anthony Tayor and compare him with other referees who have overseen 20+ games this season

Anthony Tayor gives the lowest number of fouls per game, the lowest number of fouls per tackle.  Robert Jones gives the highest number of yellow cards per game, Craig Pawson gives the highest number of fouls per game and David Cotte the lowest number of yellow cards per game.

So let now look at what this means in practice.

• David Coote sees 18% more fouls than Anthony Taylo per game.
• David Coote sees 28% more fouls per tackle than Anthony Tayor
• Robert Jones hands out 12% more yellow cards than David Coote

But what of the results?

Again restricting ourselves to referees who have overseen 20 games or more in the Premier League this season we find this

 

Referee	Games	HomeWin%	AwayWin%	Draw%
Anthony Taylor	30	33.3%	43.3%	23.3%
Robert Jones	26	65.4%	26.9%	7.7%
Stuart Attwell	25	72.0*%	12.0%	16.0%
Craig Pawson	21	33.3%	47.6%	19.0%
Peter Bankes	21	61.9%	4.8%	33.3%

 

This is where the range becomes almost obscene, and we can immediately understand why no mainstream media outlet will ever publish these figures

72% of Stuart Attwell’s games end as home wins.   But only 33% of Taylor’s and Pawson’s games end as home wins!

47.6% of Pawson’s games end as away wins but only 4.8% of Bankes’ games end as away wins!

33.3% of Bankes’ games end as draws but only 7.7% of Jones’ games end as draws!

In short, although knowing which referee you have will not exactly determine what the result will be, it most certainly does give an insight into the likely outcome.

For this match, Arsenal have Taylor as the referee who is a referee whose most likely outcome from a match is an away win, which is obviously helpful.  But overall he is the most balanced of referees in terms of getting close to equal numbers of home wins, away wins and draws.    Unless he reads this and determines to adjust his figures!

You’ll know Manchester City have lost Stones and Walker.  Arsenal are reported by the Independent to be likely not to have Saka, Martinelli and Gabriel Magalhaes

But the Standard says, “Arsenal are confident all of Bukayo Saka, Gabriel Martinelli and Gabriel Magalhaes will be fit after recent injury issues.”

The also add that “Oleksandr Zinchenko, Takehiro Tomiyasu and Jakub Kiwior are all competing for the left-back berth and Mikel Arteta will have to decide whether to start Jorginho, Thomas Partey or Leandro Trossard in central midfield with Declan Rice and Martin Odegaard if Martinelli is fit,” and predict a 1-1 draw.

The Arsenal hating Football.London site run by the Mirror tells us that there are Four key Arsenal players who could miss the game, but that’s normal for them.

Sports Mole also predict a 1-1 draw and offer us the team of

Raya;

White, Saliba, Gabriel, Zinchenko;

Odegaard, Jorginho, Rice;

Saka, Havertz, Martinelli

which I would certainly say is a pretty good line up, all things considered, and by and large a 1-1 draw wouldn’t leave me crying into my Merlot.