By Tony Attwood
The Premier League have appointed John Brooks as the new referee for Arsenal’s trip to Brentford on Thursday and have stood down Tony Harrington, who was originally given the job. As ever with the fanatically secretive PGMO and its workings, there is no explanation available, which leaves us to try and work out what’s going on.
And fortunately, because we have been studying PGMO for years via the statistics that Untold regularly publishes, we can see that the new incoming referee is much more prone to hand out penalties than the man now removed from the match – and that could give Brentford a real boost as their scoring potential from open play is much lower than Arsenal’s.
Now, to be quite clear, we don’t have any direct evidence of match fixing – we just watch events and note the PGMO’s fanatical secrecy, and all we can say is changing a referee one day before a match is very rare, and it is a fact that the new ref gives out many more penalties than the removed ref, which must help Brentford.
This is because Arsenal have scored 25% more goals than Brentford, and Brentford have conceded twice as many goals as Arsenal this season. What better way to give Brentford a boost than to have a penalty-prone referee running this game?
This is not to say the game is fixed or the referee has been bought – it may all just be pure coincidence, but the fact is that given the record this season of the two clubs, Brentford’s best chance of a goal is a penalty, and one referee who gives out few penalties has been removed and replaced by a referee who tends to hand out more.
It might all just be chance, of course, but if so, that suggests PGMO didn’t look at the record of the referees to try to replace like with like.
So did one of the teams make a complaint? Did one of the assistant referees make a complaint? Or is there something hidden in the statistics of the two referees that can reveal to us the secret workings of PGMOL? All we can do, as the website that runs the statistics on refs, is try and find out. Although we might note that Talk Sport have suggested that the change comes after the stood down man’s “controversial role in Chelsea’s 2-0 win at home to Fulham.” If so, it is a very rare occurrence and odd that it should happen just at this moment, just in this very controversial way.
Last August the BBC reported that referee Michael Salisburywas stood down for the Arsenal game away to Liverpool because of a mistake by the video assistant referee in a previous game between Chelsea and Fulham.
The storywas covered by a range of English media, but the media did not then comment on the performance of the two referees in the same way that they might look at the performance of a player after he has been dropped. Yet the statistics are all available, and we must wonder, “Why not?”
WhoScored provides all the details needed to check if there is a massive variety in the way referees respond to events.
In the first three lines in the table below, we look at three widely used referees, and then in the last two lines, we have the referee who has suddenly been put in charge of the Arsenal game and the referee who has equally suddenly been taken out of the game.
| Referee | Games | Fouls pg | Fouls Per Tackle | Pen pg | Yel pg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stuart Attwell | 16 | 20.44 | 0.62 | 0.31 | 4.56 |
| Simon Hooper | 15 | 23.33 | 0.65 | 0.07 | 4.00 |
| Craig Pawson | 14 | 20.93 | 0.63 | 0.21 | 2.21 |
| John Brooks IN | 9 | 20.56 | 0.65 | 0.44 | 3.67 |
| Tony Harrington OUT | 12 | 19.67 | 0.60 | 0.25 | 3.17 |
Here’s the reality…
- Brooks gives out 75% more penalties per game than Harrington
- Brooks gives out 15% more yellow cards than Harrington
But now let us have a look at the results these two referees cook up, and here we see that Brooks is a home win referee and Harrington an away win referee. And Brentford are at home,
| Referee | Games | HomeWin% | AwayWin% | Draw% |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tony Harrington OUT | 12 | 25.0% | 50.0% | 25.0% |
| John Brooks IN | 9 | 77.8% | 11.1% | 11.1% |
As far as PGMOL might be concerned, that 50% away win record could well be Harrington’s problem, given that Arsenal are away. But Brentford do have difficulties in scoring goals, so it is interesting that Brooks sees almost twice as many penalties a game.
Of course, there should not be referees who mostly see home wins, and others who mostly see draws – but given that there are, the PGMO ought to be very careful over who they place in what game
And doubly careful when they remove a referee who specialises in away wins, and replace him with a referee who specialises in home wins. Especially when Arsenal are involved, and they must know by now, that we’ll spot this..
