Scandal of the referee for the Arsenal v Manchester City game

 

Arsenal v Manchester City, the referee

Stuart Attwell will referee an Arsenal fixture for the first time in almost two years this weekend, following the controversy surrounding his last Gunners game.

The scandal evolved after  Bruno Guimaraes was not even given a yellow card for an elbow to the back of Jorginho’s head, before Newcastle’s winning goal against Arsenal in a previous match.  Arteta expressed his views very clearly on TV after the game.

Inevitably, the FA sided with the referee without even considering any evidence, and charged Arteta with insulting officials and that old favourite, bringing the game into disrepute.  A ludicrous charge since it was that charge itself which brought the entire PGMO into disrepute.  

Indeed, even some of the media thought the PGMO had gone too far that time with its vendetta against Arsenal but rather than sack the referee and apologise to Arsenal, asking at least for the game to be replayed, all PGMO did was to avoid giving that referee an Arsenal match for two years.   

But of course, by deliberately having so few referees on its roster, PGMO ultimately had to bring this referee back – it is all part of the nonsense of the way in which PGMO works.  The obvious rule – each ref only seeing each team twice a season at most (once for one of their home games and once for an away game) is never even debated, yet it would obviously cut down on arguments about referee bias.

This season Stuart Atwell has overseen three games, and we can again see the variation between referees.  Taking (I must stress) just this season’s data, he is seeing 20 fouls a game.  Simon Hooper is seeing over 30 fouls per game!   Yet both men are refereeing Premier League matches!   Attwell is getting on for six yellow cards a game, while Oliver is averaging one yellow card per game.

Are they really seeing utterly different games, or is it that they are applying different standards?  Or is there unconscious bias?

But it is when we come to the results of Attwell’s games that things get really spooky.  Last season, 26.3% of his games were home wins, 47.4% of his games were away wins, and the remaining 26.3% of his games were draws.

And it doesn’t look as if anyone at PGMO has given him any sort of retraining, as this season out of his three games, one has been a home win, one an away, and one a draw.

Of course, three games is hardly enough to measure a referee on, although we can say that the early results don’t look too hopeful, but yet again we can say perfectly clearly and without fear of logical contradiction, which referee Arsenal get has a major impact on the result of the match.

And to give just one simple example of this without boring you with going over the same stats over and over again, last season John Brooks, across 16 Premier League games, saw 68.8% of those games as home wins, 12.5% as away wins and 18.8% as draws.   Thus showing once more (and really we have shown this so often that I’d agree there is no point in showing it once more) that the result a club gets is as much to do with which referee oversees the game, as anything else.

And yes, I know I go on and on and on about this, but it is so blindingly obvious that referees in the most popular league in the world should not have such different interpretations of the rules that one has to ask why the media won’t pick up on these figures.

I can only assume, and yes it is an assumption only, that PGMO has told journalist and their publications that if they do focus on these outrageous disparities in terms of referee decision making, they will lose all their privileges in terms of free seats, a nice desk and computer to type on, refreshments and the chance to interview players (but never ever the referee, as for example they do in Germany.)

Thus, the media won’t touch this subject, and in my view, the viewing public are thus utterly misled.

Of course, I can’t blame commentators for this – they have their jobs, which they obviously enjoy and breaking the “don’t mention the ref” rule more than once or twice would lose them their job.   And really, if your last job was writing or speaking reports on football matches, what on earth could you do after that?