So now we come to the issue of the referee
Southampton v Arsenal
- Referee: Sam Barrott
- Assistant Referees: James Mainwaring & Wade Smith
The fact is that the moment the referee is announced for a game, clubs that have players who can change their style and approach quickly get a picture of what the ref for their next game is going to do, since they know just how much a result can depend on the referee.
Below we publish the figures that Arsenal will be using, comparing the referee for this match (Sam Barrott) with three other Premier League referees. Of course this will be harder for Southampton since they are now in the Championship.
The final row in the table below shows how much more of each activity the most active referee in our selection of four regular referees engages in, compared with the referee who does it the least.
So to be clear, Simon Hooper hands out 21% more free kicks for fouls match by match than Samuel Barrott. Stuart Attwell hands out over four times as many penaltiese than Simon Hooper. And Stuart Attwell hands out 62% more yellow cards than Michael Oliver (Data from WhoScored).
And even if you don’t think it is worth comparing referees, the one thing that leaps out here is the huge variance there is between one referee and another, remembering that these figures come from the most experienced referees in the League.
| Games | FOuls per game | Pen per game | Yellow per game | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Michael Oliver | 23 | 22.39 | 0.04 | 2.83 |
| Stuart Attwell | 20 | 21.20 | 0.40 | 4.60 |
| Samuel Barrott | 19 | 19.21 | 0.32 | 3.63 |
| Simon Hooper | 15 | 23.33 | 0.07 | 4.00 |
| Variation | 21% | 450% | 62% |
Now in the major clubs, the players all know this, of course, and so the managers and their staff work with the players before each game in terms of the attributes of the referee. So in this case, they will be saying – be careful in the penalty area when defending, but if you feel the slightest trip or touch on you in the penalty area, and you can’t immediately recover, go down and appeal. You might well get a penalty.
Of course, I know that when I write this, there are some supporters of other teams who say, “Arsenal players might do this, because they cheat, but our players don’t.” And I would say to them, that is probably not true, but if it is, it is silly. PGMO is not ensuring that all referees are equal, so don’t expect that to be the case.
The fact is, referees should not be so different in the way they handle games, but they are. Worse, the Premier League clubs keep getting games which are overseen by the same referees over and over again. Six or more games in a season overseen by the same referee is not unusual – but it is ludicrous given the variation in their behaviour.. So of course, it makes sense to understand what the referee is likely to do.
Our suggestion, made week after week, is that no referee should ever oversee the matches of any club more than twice in a season. That would, of course, help reduce this problem, but with Premier League clubs getting the same referee six or even more times in a campaign, well of course, the clubs take notice and adjust their performance accordingly.
And sadly, it is not just fouls in games that show variations. The results are affected too. Here are five referees, each of whom has seen 16 or more Premier League games this season. In terms of home wins, their rate of seeing these ranged from 31% to 68%. In terms of seeing the away team win, they range from 11% of their matches overseen up to 43%. In terms of draws, they range from 13% to over 44%.
In short, you can make a fairly good guess as to the result simply by knowing the referee, which is why the football pools stopped offering interesting prize money. The data shows it all…
| Referee | Games | HomeWin% | AwayWin% | Draw% |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Peter Bankes | 22 | 68.2 | 18.2 | 13.6 |
| Thomas Bramall | 18 | 44.4 | 11.1 | 44.4 |
| Samuel Barrott | 19 | 36.8 | 21.1 | 42.1 |
| Andy Madley | 16 | 31.3 | 43.8 | 25.0 |
| Stuart Attwell | 20 | 30.0 | 35.0 | 35.0 |
For Arsenal’s games we have Samuel Barrott, and his favourite result is a draw. Of course that does not guarantee that Arsenal will get the draw, but knowing this Arsenal will have been preparing for the referee’s performance.
The match will go to extra time if the game is drawn after 90 minutes and then if there is still a draw after 120 minutes, there will be a penalty shoot-out.
