By Bulldog Drummond
Peter Bankes is the referee for Arsenal v Manchester City, and this will be his 20th match this season across the Premier League and the various cups.
This ref has overseen no less than seven ManC games this season, including the ManC defeat to Aston Villa. And so we can now compare Mr Banks with a few other referees, in terms of his behaviour on the pitch.
In the first table below, the fifth row shows the difference between the four referees we have picked in terms of fouls, penalties and yellow cards. Our argument is not that all referees should be the same, but that in some cases the level of awarding of fouls, penalties and yellow cards is far too hight. There should be more consistency.
So with fouls, Referee England sees 21% more fouls than Referee Banks. With penalties Taylor award over four times as many penalties as England, and as for yellow cards Bankes waves 20% more than Taylor.
It’s pretty crazy, and I’m certain serious clubs now have a person who briefs the team fully before each game on how to behave in front of the referee for each match – which of course is not how it should be. It should be the laws of the game that defines how players behave, not which referee you happen to have.
| RFeferee | Games | Fouls pg | Pen pg | Yel pg |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anthony Taylor | 21 | 21.52 | 0.43 | 3.38 |
| Peter Bankes | 14 | 19.36 | 0.36 | 4.07 |
| Stuart Attwell | 12 | 19.92 | 0.17 | 3.83 |
| Darren England | 10 | 23.60 | 0.10 | 3.90 |
| Range | 110% | 21% | 330% | 20% |
This sort of analysis is important since, for example, the most carded clubs (Chelsea and Southampton) and getting almost double the number of yellow cards as the least carded clubs (Brentford and Tottenham). Arsenal are 14th in the yellow card table when we look at cards for all reasons. But the point is that clubs that see Mr Yellow (Peter Bankes) a lot, will get a lot more yellow cards.
But here’s a funny thing. Since I started asking what the “Other” column was all about in the list of reasons for yellow cards supplied by Who Scored, (scroll down that page for the full statistics) the number of “other reason” awards has seriously diminished, And Arsenal are no longer way out in front for yellow cards for “other” reasons but are on 23 this season – this is second place behind Chelsea.
And I want to stress how bonkers this is. Arsenal have got 23 cards for “other” reasons, but no one seems to be able to answer my simple query, “What are these “other” reasons?”
What makes this so odd is that in terms of yellow cards for fouls Arsenal are 18th in the league on just about half as many cards as Southampton in top place. Yet they keep getting yellow cards for unexplained “other” reasons. What is going on???
We have 23 cards given against Arsenal for reasons which are not explained and seemingly inexplicable. And people wonder why we spend so much time writing about referees and PGMO, and complaining about the media’s inability to pick up on the subject!!!
But back to the game. Bankes is the “referee” (and given the lack of explanation as to what these guys are up to I do think putting the word “referee” in inverted commas is right, because a real referee’s actions would be explained.)
In the table below we look at the results under Bankes and other referees, and if you have been here before you might recall that some referees are home referees, others always seem to see away wins, and some referees quite extraordinarily get a load of draws in their games.
| Referee | Games | HomeWin% | AwayWin% | Draw% |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.Anthony Taylor | 21 | 19.0 | 57.1 | 23.8 |
| 3.Chris Kavanagh | 15 | 6.7 | 20.0 | 73.3 |
| 7.Peter Bankes | 14 | 57.1 | 35.7 | 7.1 |
| 11.John Brooks | 11 | 81.8 | 9.1 | 9.1 |
| 13.Darren England | 10 | 30.0 | 50.0 | 20.0 |
So for a change, we have a referee who likes home wins. Not as many as Brooks for sure, but still above 50%. And consider this: with Brooks in charge of a match the home team is 13 times more likely to win than if they had Kavanagh!
The result Bankes doesn’t like however is a draw – he is right at the bottom of the table for draws. Kavanagh sees 10 times as many draws as Bankes.
I guess the PGMO, if they ever made a public statement (which they don’t) would say “it’s just the way it goes”, but in the rest of life thankfully this is not how it is.
For imagine that one day, quite erroneously, you were arrested for a crime you most certainly did not commit. And imagine your solicitor could say to you, “you’ll be ok in court, you’ve got Judge Brooks, and he lets everyone off.” Or “Sorry mate, you’ve got Judge Bankes: you’re going to prison. If that could happen your faith in English justice (if you have any of course) would vanish.
But this is what we have with referees. And strangely, the media never, ever, mentions it. And PGMO don’t have a website where such matters might be debated.
