- How you can predict the result of a PL game by knowing who the referee is.
- Do Arsenal need to get rid of their tactical straightjacket?
By Tony Atttwood
So tomorrow at 8pm it is Atletico Madrid away, making this a fair time to ask just how Atletico have been doing so far and of course, most particularly how Arsenal at Atletico Madrid have fared in the Champions League. And it is also time to consider something else: European referees.
By not coming in the top eight clubs after the first round of Champions League matches, Atletico had to play extra home and away games to decide which of “the rest” could join the elite in the Champs League proper. And although that round was just two games, we can, I think, include the data from those games with the rest to l draw some comparisons between the teams overall.
For example, in terms of shots per game, Arsenal are slightly ahead of the opposition with 15.4 shots per game in Europe this season compared with Atletico Madrid’s 14.4.
In terms of yellow cards, Arsenal are the more careful, but only just having had 21 to Atletico’s 24. And in terms of possession, Arsenal average out at 53% while Atletico are at 49.1%.
The level of pass accuracy is in Arsenal’s favour too – 85.6% for Arsenal compared with Atletico’s 85.2%, although of course such a difference is indeed marginal. In terms of winning aerials, Arsenal do better, winning 13.8 compared to 11.6.
Looking at the overall performances in the competition of the top four teams and Atletico, we can see they are getting by with fewer shots and lower possession, but Arsenal are facing the problem of having fewer shots and scoring fewer goals in this competition.
| Team | Goals | Shots pg | Possession% |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bayern Munich | 38 | 19.2 | 60.8% |
| Arsenal | 27 | 15.4 | 53.0% |
| Paris Saint-Germain | 38 | 19.4 | 66.6% |
| Real Madrid | 33 | 17.4 | 53.6% |
| Atletico Madrid | 34 | 14.4 | 49.1% |
Comparisons between the Champions League games and Premier League games can be difficult to make because the number of Champions League games is small and does involve matches against a wider range of clubs in terms of ability, but we can see from the table below one or two interesting differences between Arsenal in the PL and Arsenal in the Champions League.
| Tournament | Games | Goals PG | Shots pg | Yellow PG | Possession % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Champions Lge | 12 | 2.25 | 15.4 | 1.75 | 53.0% |
| Premier League | 34 | 1.88 | 14.4 | 1.32 | 55.9% |
So we see an interesting combination – more goals, more shots, more cards and less possession in the Champions League than in the Premier League. It does seem that at least to some extent, the Champions League games are played in a different way, or perhaps to a different set of refereeing observations, than the Premier League games.
English teams didn’t enter the Uefa competitions at first, and even when they did enter, were then banned between 1985 and 1990 because of the activities of Liverpool fans at the Heysel Stadium disaster. But with English teams back, it seems there has been little commentary on the differences in refereeing between European referees and those employed by PGMO (probably at the request of PGMO who don’t like differences being made public).
But there has been an interesting discussion on the RefChat website about different styles of refereeing in Europe, where the point was made that one cannot say there is an English style of refereeing and a European style, but rather that refereeing styles and approaches do vary from country to country. For example, the argument continues, “In the Northern European countries, football tends to be quite physical so the referees generally let more go. Whereas in Southern Europe, it is much more technical and the referees are used to penalising any kind of physicality.”
Thus, it is suggested that referees (and this comes in a commentary from a referee) from the south of the continent can give a foul for any form of physical contact.
Now the point is also made that Fifa and Uefa work with their referees who oversee games outside their homeland so that referees know what to expect. As a result they referee games between clubs from different countries in a very different way from that which they use in overseeing games in their own country!
The quite remarkable point is then made in the article that Michael Oliver and Anthony Taylor referee “very differently in European games than in the EPL.” Meaning refs openly change their approach, depending on the clubs and where they are.
It is also noted on the Refereeing Abroad website that referees generally “don’t spend enough time” working on getting a “standardised approach” to refereeing. (Although of course Untold has gone further by analysing the different approaches of referees in Premier League games, finding there is little in the way of a standardised approach even within one league.)
In short, it is openly recognised that refereeing standards vary from country to country, and there are efforts going on to have referees at the highest level adopt “international standards” when overseeing games between two different countries.
That in turn means that it is down to the clubs to educate their players as to what they should expect from the referees they are seeing in each European match. I’m sure Arsenal are doing this, but I do think we often play against clubs whose players have not been helped to understand the sort of refereeing they are going to come up again.
Of course, the fact that refereeing is not the same in each country is part of the utter shambles that refereeing is in across Europe. But then we knew that anyone.
In general, although we do see some very questionable decisions by European refs, they don’t seem to be governed by an anti-Arsenal agenda, as is the case with the PGMOL. o
A recent anecdote: I was talking to a very committed Newcastle supporter, who, without any prompt from me, said that Pope’s foul on Gyokeres would have been a certain red card against any other team but Arsenal.