By Tony Attwood
- What five games tells us about who is going to win the league this season
- Sun newspaper vanishes into wild weird fantasy land of a curse
You know that things are going ok when the newspaper previews focus entirely on the opposition – in the case of the Guardian, talking solely about Tonali of Newcastle in their regular weekend preview. That of course helps them avoid the embarrassing fact that Newcastle’s only league win this season was against Wolverhampton Wanderers, whose rather sad record is played five lost five, scored three, conceded 12.
That record compares with Newcastle who have also scored three, but also only conceded three. And indeed, when we look at Arsenal away and Newcastle at home last season, we do find some similarities. In fact Newcastle’s home record last season was quite similar to Arsenal’s away record.
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6 | Newcastle United home | 19 | 12 | 2 | 5 | 40 | 20 | 20 | 38 |
| 5 | Arsenal away | 19 | 11 | 6 | 2 | 35 | 17 | 18 | 39 |
Newcastle spent a quarter of a billion pounds on five players in the summer as well as taking Alan Ramsdale on loan, Antoñito Corderoon on a free from Malaga, and five of their own players returning on loan from lands as diverse as Juventus and Leyton Orient.
This season, Arsenal’s top scorer is Gyökeres with three. Newcastle have three players who have each scored one goal.
We have already noticed the recent turnaround in results between the two clubs, after a long run of Arsenal wins, as in the last seven games, it has been three wins to each side and one draw. And when we look at games at Newcastle, it is even more depressing – in the last four, it is three wins to them and only one to Arsenal (0-2 in May 2023).. And we should also note they have finished the last three seasons in the top seven.
On the injury front, they are doing better than Arsenal with just three players out: Jacob Ramsey, Yoane Wissa and Fabian Schar.
So now onto the dubious bit….
Jarred Gillett is the referee. He has already seen three games this season so comparing his record in this campaign with other referees who have overseen three or more games in the Premier League, we find the usual extraordinary range of refereeing decisions after this tiny part of the season. And if you are still not convinced that there is a massive variation between the way referees take action in games, just take a look at these figures. The ref stats and club stats below come from Who Scored as always
| Referee | Games | Fouls pg | Yel pg |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stuart Attwell | 4 | 21.50 | 5.00 |
| Simon Hooper | 4 | 30.75 | 5.50 |
| Craig Pawson | 3 | 26.33 | 1.67 |
| Jarred Gillett | 3 | 18.00 | 2.00 |
| Range* | 71% | 229% |
*The range figure shows how much biggter the highest number is in the column above the lowest number.
The simple fact is that Simon Hooper has seen 71% more fouls than Jarred Gillett and waved 229% more yellow cards than Craig Pawson. Thus, which referee a club gets will greatly affect where they are in the league. Get Mr Hooper for five games in the season (which under PGMO “rules” is quite possible despite our call year after year for no referee to see any team more than twice), and it is likely the club will be running out of players.
The fact is that these referees are all watching matches in the Premier League through the first few weeks of this season, and yet are getting ludicrously different figures when it comes to the number of fouls they see, and the number of yellow cards they give out.
We have been reporting this for around ten years, and yet absolutely nothing is done about this. None of the media will even look at the subject, and the PGMO (probably the only significant organisation in the UK without a website) utterly refuse to appoint more referees so that no club is forced to suffer the card waving and whistle blowing of the extremists.
The fact is, it would be incredibly simple to appoint enough referees so that no club gets to suffer the whistle-blowing of someone like Referee Hooper, while a rival gets away with anything it likes because it is in a game overseen by Referee Gillett
And if the PGMO is so impoverished that it can’t afford to employ more referees, it could at least train them all to the same standard.
Now in this game, we have Jarred Gillett, who takes it easy with both fouls and yellow cards. As for other issues, the clubs below are the 10 with the most possession, and are listed in order of possession recorded in league games so far.
| Team | Shots pg | Yellow | PossessioN |
|---|---|---|---|
| Liverpool | 14.2 | 10 | 63.3% |
| Chelsea | 13 | 12 | 61.5% |
| Tottenham | 11.6 | 9 | 59.0% |
| Arsenal | 13.2 | 8 | 54.9% |
| Manchester City | 11 | 7 | 52.3% |
| Newcastle | 10.8 | 6 | 51.2% |
| Bournemouth | 13.6 | 14 | 48.7% |
| Sunderland | 10.2 | 7 | 44.6% |
| Everton | 11.4 | 13 | 44.0% |
| Crystal Palace | 11.4 | 13 | 42.4% |
Arsenal put in 22% more shots than Newcastle, get 33% more yellow cards than Newcastle, and have 3.7% more possession than Newcastle across the games played so far.
More info anon….
