By Tony Attwood
Elsewhere: 100 years in the top division. The end of Swindin; the awful tenure of Wright
And on Untold Arsenal…
- Leeds v Arsenal – and for once it is not on TV, but it could be goals a plenty
- Slowly, very slowly, Uefa is making football slightly more balanced and equal
I guess we need hardly say a word about Stuart Attwell. A short while back we opened a preview with the lines, “We first looked at the work of Stuart Attwell on the pitch way back in 2012, and pretty damning that review was…” and indeed each time we see him we have to update matters a bit further and bring out our regular plea – why can’t the richest league in the world have enough referees so that each club only sees each referee twice in a season – once at home and once away. To make such an arrangement might involve the PGMO training up a few more referees to the highest level – but they are overseeing matches relating to the richest league in the world, and indeed matches involving clubs that provide the majority of the top eight teams in Europe, so surely it would be worth the effort.
Instead, week after week, we see and hear supporters not just of Arsenal but of almost every club complaining about the standard of refereeing, and undoubtedly, this does make the way that those watching Premier League matches in other countries really start to wonder what is going on.
And so nothing happens, and the secret society that runs refereeing in the Premier League continues on its own way, with no newspapers or media outlets daring to utter more than the occasional half-sentence about what the referee got up to.
So let us see what we can expect this time. Our man this weekend is one who is on the low end of seeing fouls – Simon Hooper sees over 19% more fouls per Premier League game (although curiously only 8% more fouls per tackle, which is very odd).
But Stuart Attwell loves to award penalties, however. This season, he has already handed out many, many more penalties than such other regular PL referees as Michael Oliver, Craig Pawson and Simon Hooper. In fact, our referee this weekend hands out more than twice as many penalties per game as each one of those regular Premier League referees!
He is also less enthusiastic about the yellow card waving. While Stuart Attwell waves on average 4.64 yellow cards a game, Craig Pawson shows under half this number of yellow cards. In fact, with yellow cards, the refereeing is split into two parts. Attwell and Hooper are handing out over four yellow a game on average, while the likes of Craig Pawson hand out under two yellow cards a game. Get the wrong ref, and you get lots of cards!
It truly is the case that how many yellow cards a club gets in a season is not just down to how many fouls and assaults their players commit, but also to which referee they have. And as we have said so many times, this could be stopped if only the rule were that each referee only sees each club once at home and once away each season.
So now let’s have a look at the results of Mr Attwell compared with others.
| Referee | Games | HomeWin% | AwayWin% | Draw% |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Michael Oliver | 18 | 38.9 | 38.9 | 22.2 |
| Peter Bankes | 16 | 75.0 | 12.5 | 12.5 |
| Stuart Attwell | 14 | 42.9 | 21.4 | 35.7 |
| Samuel Barrott | 14 | 35.7 | 21.4 | 42.9 |
| Thomas Bramall | 13 | 38.5 | 7.7 | 53.8 |
As you can see, each of these referees has seen between 13 and 18 Premier League games this season. But the percentage of matches they see as home wins varies enormously from 35.7% to 7%%. Fortunately for Arsenal, we are not seeing the 75% home win man, but have a referee who sees roughly four in ten of his matches as home wins. There are referees who see fewer, but at least we haven’t got the worst of the hom-wins-forever brigade.
What we are looking for is an away win referee and at 21.4% away wins Stuart Attwell is just about the best of a bad bunch.
And I write “bad bunch” with feeling because during the pandemic, when games started again, they were initially played with no crowds, and then with just very small crowds in the grounds. And what the statistics showed was that the number of home wins dropped dramatically in that era.
Detailed academic research that we have reported here before, concluded that referees during the pandemic era could not be influenced by crowds, and so saw the game as it really was, and this resulted in many more away wins. As soon as the crowds came back, the old percentage home-bias resumed.
So this weekend we have a referee who sees about one in five of his games as an away win. It does give a huge benefit to Leeds but leaves Arsenal with a bit of a chance, given that Arsenal have the best record in the Premier League this season for away wins: 15 wins, 5 draws, 3 defeats. Arsenal also have the best away defence this season, having conceded just 17 away goals. Leeds have scored 19 home goals this season.
However, it does seem Attwell can be influenced by the crowd. Arsenal’s job, therefore it to keep the crowd quiet, or better get them to turn on Leeds. They have scored 19 at home this season – the same as Bournemouth and Brighton, so we really ought to stand a fighting chance.
More later…..
