On the Arsenal history website:
On Untold Arsenal
It is interesting to see that various websites are now taking up the cry that some referees make far too many mistakes. I do go along with that, but on this site we go a step further, looking at how some referees somehow see far more home wins than others, while others seem to specialise in seeing many more fouls than others..
As a result, clubs that get specific referees over and over again can get a real benefit or negative experience because of that referee’s bias towards away teams, or find that this ref is ever willing to let more fouls go etc. This is not to say there is no actual bias among refs for or against certain teams, but at least it is a set of data that can be proven through statistics rather than pointing to specific mistakes a ref makes in relation to a certain team.
For the West Ham game, the referee is John Brooks.
Now, the first thing we notice is that John Brooks has not refereed a single Premier League game this season. Not one. Why that is, we don’t know. Was he ill? Was he working in some UEFA Champions League matches? Was he on holiday? We are not told, and that omission reduces our understanding of the game.
What we do know is that he was not relegated to the Championship either. So where was he? If this was a player we we have all the information, but here, no, we have nothing.
What we do know is that he has not been seen around and about for a while, and then suddenly he pops up to do a critical London derby match. It’s curious to say the least.
But we do have his figures for last season and these make very curious reading.
In the table below we look at six referees and their figures from last season as supplied by WhoScored.
The second column obviously shows the number of Premier League games each referee oversaw and the next column the fouls per game. This figure is the average of courses across all the PL games that the referee saw in the season and varies from 24.82 for R Jones and 19.96 for C Kavanagh; a variation of 13%. And remember this is not just in one game – this is across over 20 games each. Match after match one ref is seeing 13% more fouls than another.
But when it comes to penalties, things really go bonkers. Anthony Taylor sees way more than double the number of penalties per game across the whole season than Chris Kavanagh. How can that possibly be right?
Even crazier we have yellow cards. Mr Brooks waved 87% more yellow cards per game, than Anthony Taylor. Match after match, he was out there waving those cards. If Arsenal do study this form guide, they will be saying to the players, don’t tackle, let them tackle. Red cards bring the same variation as everything else. Match after match, Anthony Taylor, Chris Kavanagh Robert Jones wave almost the same number of cards.. But TonyHarrington waved THREE TIMES AS MANY red cards across their matches as John Brooks.
We are speculating that Mr Brooks has been sent for retraining, but if that is so the question is for what? Here’s one answer – in the eyes of PGMO he is not waving enough red cards. He is showing more yellow cards per game than other referees, but not the red ones. Which means the players need to ensure they don’t full foul of his instruction to dish out the reds.
So, judging by the statistics (and since PGMO make no public comments and have no website, we can only go by the figures Who Scored provides) John Brooks has been in their bad books for not sending enough men off and is instead just waving yellow cards all the time.
| Referee | Games | Fouls pg | Pen pg | Yel pg | Red pg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anthony Taylor | 31 | 21.26 | 0.29 | 2.87 | 0.19 |
| Chris Kavanagh | 25 | 21.40 | 0.12 | 4.44 | 0.20 |
| Simon Hooper | 24 | 19.96 | 0.21 | 4.67 | 0.08 |
| Robert Jones | 22 | 24.82 | 0.27 | 4.23 | 0.18 |
| Tony Harrington | 18 | 22.61 | 0.22 | 4.06 | 0.17 |
| John Brooks | 16 | 22.63 | 0.19 | 5.38 | 0.06 |
Arsenal, of course, need to be aware of this. This man could be sent out tomorrow in order to change his statistics.
And in this regard, it is most interesting that he has been chosen for a match that is not on live TV. That makes it look like PGMO do not want this referee in the limelight. Of course, comments can be picked up in Match of the Day when all the games are over, but as a rule they tend to be very gentle with referees so this might explain matters. This referee is given a non-televised game to try and turn his propensity for yellows into reds.
This of course, is not how football should be. Refs should be roughly the same in their visions of the game. But clearly they are not.
