Brentford v Arsenal: with the teams evenly matched the change of referee could be decisive

 

• PGMO replace appointed ref with penalty prone “home win specialist” for Arsenal away game
• Brentford v Arsenal 12 February: the form and the ground

By Tony Attwood

There really can be no news bigger ahead of this match tonight than the news we have already covered – that the referee originally designated for this game has been replaced by a referee known for this willingness to give home wins.   If you missed it, please do have a look at the “PGMO replace” article linked above.

All we can do, of course, is bring attention to the enormity of this change, its implications for Arsenal, and the precedent that it sets.   If, as I suspect, they get away with this change this time, with little or no comment from the media, they will most certainly see it as a way of manipulating future games.

But at least with Arsenal we can be slightly reassured by the fact that quite clearly, the club does prepare the players not just in terms of who they are are playing on the pitch but also who the referee is.   And they will be doing emergency re-training today on the basis of this last minute change.

Meanwhile, other issues continue as normal, including of course, injuries.

Top of the injury league is, as has been the case for almost all the season, Tottenham Hots with 12 men out.  Just behind them is Chelsea with nine.

Both Brentford and Arsenal are further down the injury league with five men out each.   In fact there are seven clubs all told with five men down.   At the other end of the table are Everton with one man out and Fulham with two.

Arsenal’s injured group of players absolutely ruled ou contains Merino, Dowman, and Saka (the latter being defined as hoping to rejoin the team “very soon”). .   Martin Odegaard is rated 50/50 for this game and is down as “being assessed” as is Leandro Trossard, although he is defined as only 25% ready.   I suspect it is unlikely that we shall see either of these players tonight, but they could be back for the next game.

As noted, Brentford are also listed as having five players injured, and in their case, all five are listed as ruled out.   They are Carvalho, Milambo, Schade (who is actually suspended rather than inured), Dasilva and Reiss Nelson, who is still an Arsenal player but on loan to Brentford and so barred from playing.  He has, in fact, only made two starts this season, but has come on seven times as a substitute.

Much has been made of late in the media of the fact that Arsenal have “discovered” how to score – a way of getting around the actual fact that it is the journalists who have discovered that Arsenal are the second highest scoring team in the Premier League.    What is interesting in the Arsenal list of scorers, however, is that the second highest scorer this season is Martinelli, who has knocked in ten, despite making the majority of his appearances as a substitute.  Gyökeres, despite all the fuss made about him, has got 13.

Brentford are in a bunch of over half the teams in the Premier League who have conceded between 30 and 38 goals so far this season.  Arsenal, on the other hand, are within a goal of scoring two goals a game this season.  Only Manchester City have gone beyond that point in this campaign.   Put another way, Arsenal’s goal difference is 27 greater than Brentford’s.

But with the change of referee at the last minute (see the previous article), Arsenal should also be very wary of Brentford’s current run of form.   If we look at their last ten games, they have won seven, lost two and drawn one.   The defeats were to Nottingham Forest and Chelsea – but since then, they have beaten Aston Villa and Newcastle.

Arsenal’s run in their last ten games is curiously similar with seven wins, two draws and one defeat – that being the loss at home to Manchester United.   In this run, Arsenal have scored 21 goals and conceded nine.   This compares with Brentford who have scored 19 and and conceded (exactly as per Arsenal) nine.

On the basis of the goals, we could be looking forward to a good, fun game, except that now we all know that there has been a last minute change of referee, which is very much in Brentford’s favour.   PGMO, of course, knows that the media will make nothing of that, either now or after the game, and the great fear is if this late change plays out in favour of Brentford, the media will make nothing of it, and  PGMO might well try the idea of a last-minute change of officials in subsequent matches too.   It does not bode well.