RefWatch – Lee Mason, Stoke City Vs Arsenal (26/08/2012 – 13:30)

Posted on by DogFace



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By DogFace

  • Referee: Lee Mason
  • Assistant 1: Simon Long
  • Assistant 2: Ron Ganfield
  • 4th Official: Howard Webb

Good morning stat-fans and welcome to RefWatch. Today we face Stoke City and this is never an easy game. Stoke are a team who play a brand of football and play it very efficiently. It is a game of statistics and percentages, it is not a game of free flowing football but a game where n balls lumped at x big man will produce y goals… it is also a style of football that employs a certain gamesmanship with regards to the rules.

We can sneer at it, but it is effective and has seen them stay up in the Premier League where others have fallen.

This makes the choice of referee very important in that Stoke will take full advantage of a weak referee or one that is swayed by the intimidating atmosphere of the home crowd.

Let’s have a look at the markets.

Asian Handicap (betting line) market:

Home Handicap Away
2.000 1/4 – 0 1.900

The Under/Over market:

Over Handicap Under
1.825 2 1/4 2.075

Let’s have a look at the Referee:

  • Full name: Lee S. Mason
  • Date of birth: 29-Oct-1971 (Age 41)
  • Place of birth: Bolton
  • Resides: Lancashire
  • EPL Referee Since: 2002/2003
  • EPL Games to date: 189

Lee Mason
Lee Mason

It’s Lee Mason again… check out his match reviews:

Season Score Match
2011/2012 72.000% Chelsea 2 – 1 West Bromwich Albion
2011/2012 56.600% Arsenal 3 – 1 Stoke City
2011/2012 65.000% Manchester United 1 – 0 Sunderland
2010/2011 47.000% Arsenal 2 – 1 Everton
Average Score: 60.150%

Let’s check out his stats!

FPB = Fouls Per Booking (vertical axis)<br /> BPM = Bookings Per Match(line width)<br /> AHS = Asian Handicap Swing i.e. the deviation from the expected result(vertical axis)<br /> PPG = Points Per Game(line width)<br /> Therefore a high thin line for FPB/BPM would indicate a lot of fouls and very little bookings – and a low thin line for AHS/PPG would indicate an underperformance against the betting line and very few points taken.

Lee Mason has had 22 games for Stoke City consisting of 8 wins, 6 draws and 8 losses.

Stoke City are currently in 18th in Lee Mason’s personal Points Per Game League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the EPL, with an average of 1.36 PPG.

In Lee Mason’s personal Handicap Swing League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the EPL, Stoke City come 4th with an average positive swing of 0.75.

Stoke City are currently in 21st in Lee Mason’s personal Booking’s Per Match League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the EPL, with an overall average of 1.91 BPM.

In Lee Mason’s personal Fouls Per Booking League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the EPL, Stoke City come 22nd with an overall average of 6.48 FPB.

Lee Mason’s figures against Stoke of late have been very favourable, Stoke have shown clear over performances and a good points return over the last two seasons. Be booking figures seem fairly consistent in that, barring the 2010/2011 season, Stoke have seen more bookings per foul than their opposition, which is probably about right for a team that seeks to find the limits of the rules as applied by the official on the day.

The colour of the line represents the player type.<br /> The position of the line against the vertical axis will indicate the average time of the booking and the thickness of the line indicates the average number of bookings of players in that position.<br /> Therefore a high fat orange line would indicate that the referee often books the specified teams defence out of the challenge early, a low thin line or no line would indicate the opposite. The number of minutes bottoms out at 100 to indicate no bookings.

Above is a seasonal breakdown on how, when and where Stoke City took all their bookings under Lee Mason.

The colour of the line represents the player type.<br /> The position of the line against the vertical axis will indicate the average time of the booking and the thickness of the line indicates the average number of bookings of players in that position.<br /> Therefore a high fat orange line would indicate that the referee often books the specified teams defence out of the challenge early, a low thin line or no line would indicate the opposite. The number of minutes bottoms out at 100 to indicate no bookings.

Above is a seasonal breakdown on how, when and where Stoke City’s opposition took all their bookings under Lee Mason.

It is encouraging that there is a trend to earlier bookings from Lee Mason against Stoke City in the defence and the midfield. It would be nice to see Lee Mason clamp down on any over physical play from to off today.

FPB = Fouls Per Booking (vertical axis)<br /> BPM = Bookings Per Match(line width)<br /> AHS = Asian Handicap Swing i.e. the deviation from the expected result(vertical axis)<br /> PPG = Points Per Game(line width)<br /> Therefore a high thin line for FPB/BPM would indicate a lot of fouls and very little bookings – and a low thin line for AHS/PPG would indicate an underperformance against the betting line and very few points taken.

Lee Mason has had 9 games for Arsenal consisting of 5 wins, 2 draws and 2 losses.

Arsenal are currently in 4th in Lee Mason’s personal Points Per Game League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the EPL, with an average of 1.89 PPG.

In Lee Mason’s personal Handicap Swing League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the EPL, Arsenal come 11th with an average positive swing of 0.14.

Arsenal are currently in 29th in Lee Mason’s personal Booking’s Per Match League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the EPL, with an overall average of 2.22 BPM.

In Lee Mason’s personal Fouls Per Booking League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the EPL, Arsenal come 31st with an overall average of 4.50 FPB.

Our history with Lee Mason has been historically quite poor although over the last two seasons we have mildly over performed and seen a reasonable return of points.

The colour of the line represents the player type.<br /> The position of the line against the vertical axis will indicate the average time of the booking and the thickness of the line indicates the average number of bookings of players in that position.<br /> Therefore a high fat orange line would indicate that the referee often books the specified teams defence out of the challenge early, a low thin line or no line would indicate the opposite. The number of minutes bottoms out at 100 to indicate no bookings.

Above is a seasonal breakdown on how, when and where Arsenal took all their bookings under Lee Mason.

The colour of the line represents the player type.<br /> The position of the line against the vertical axis will indicate the average time of the booking and the thickness of the line indicates the average number of bookings of players in that position.<br /> Therefore a high fat orange line would indicate that the referee often books the specified teams defence out of the challenge early, a low thin line or no line would indicate the opposite. The number of minutes bottoms out at 100 to indicate no bookings.

Above is a seasonal breakdown on how, when and where Arsenal’s opposition took all their bookings under Lee Mason.

There has been some consistency in the booking figures for our opposition but we can see a clear drop off for Arsenal’s bookings last season… which is nice.

Let’s move on now to check out how Lee Mason performs against selected teams in the EPL:

The ine thickness represents the average Points Per Game and the position of the line against the vertical axis represents the average swing againd the handicap.

There doesn’t seem to be any consistent performers for Lee Mason in the Premier League for the teams selected… Manchester United seems to do very well and Stoke are on something of an erratic upward trend. Arsenal have had as up and down a time of it under Lee Mason as Stoke so this is a hard one to call. We are the better team, but Stoke will do what Stoke do best and that will be very hard to break down with a new team that is bedding into the league. This could very well be a ‘welcome to the EPL’ match for the new boys.

The Predictortron gives Stoke City a half of a goal advantage – but I wouldn’t put much faith in that – the one positive is that currently Bet365 are offering the best odds on a Stoke win – it will be worth (with the close relationship they have with Stoke City) monitoring that market in the run up to kick off to see how they play their hand.

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21 Replies to “RefWatch – Lee Mason, Stoke City Vs Arsenal (26/08/2012 – 13:30)”

  2. They always score headers against us, but if we widen the pitch and use Theo and Podolski to wrip in a few balls, we might get a break through with Giroud.

  5. I think I have seen one of his best games to be honest… Has he read Untold? and learned 😉

  6. @walters and Dogface
    Not from the side of stopping time wasting for god sake, their goalkeeper took more than half a minute to play the goal kick just to whistle full time…

  8. Hey Livingstone, welcome you have come to the right site and trust me you will be at-ease.
    When you join this site you enjoy the Arsenal and please do not ever again read simanyi Redpepper,Bukedde or newpoison.

  10. Yassin, That is also correct.

    But with this ref and at Stoke my worst fear was we might lose someone. And he took out his yellow cards when needed and that stopped them from kicking the shit out of us.
    At first sight no broken legs and that is for me enough from a ref point of view.

  12. @Walter what about that handball from Podolski`s shot? no penalty there? and shouldnt have that player who carelessly lunged into Vermaelen been off?

  14. Sammy,
    I’d say two clean sheets is excellent, we are the kings of the self inflicted 1-0 defeat when we abandon all defensive discipline chasing a goal. It’s not as if we weren’t getting shots on target and working the keeper as we have done before when our attack breaks down.
    At the rate Cazorla creates chances, WHEN our attack clicks in we will start thrashing teams. Giroud for me is doing exactly what we want from him apart from scoring, forcing defenders away from their own goal, which puts the onus on them to stop balls in behind them for Theo and Podolski to run onto.

  15. The defending from Liverpool today gives me hope that we might end our goal drought next Sunday.

  16. Thanks for the numbers dogface.

    I look forward to seeing the ref review – Mason seemed pretty good today to my eyes. Didn’t get every foul but certainly seemed like a fair effort from him, which is more than we normally get at the Brittania shithole

  17. Sammy,
    I’m happy with the two clean sheets at this stage however we have to start getting it together soon. Stoke away is a tough game and our first game we would have been lucky if we had won with all the new players having to bed in.

  18. Absolutely love the comment “Wenger should buy Jesus”. Presumably the commenter meant Jesus of Navas? If not the sandles may pose a problem. Sandles and shinpads.

  20. I like to think we did well .We were never flustered nor in disarray ,and for once dealt with the aerial threat quite well.At the end they seemed to be really worned out and happy to hear the final whistle.
    Giroud’s cheeky effort almost caught them out .Nice vision !
    This side is reminding me of the 1990-1991 team,where we were difficult to score against ,while at the same time goals were had to come by too !

  21. I am surprised by the small number of comments, but it was a bank holiday weekend. The ref did miss a few fouls from the thugs and I don’t think there was a card for the horrible tackle on the Verminator late in the match. Also. the ref did ignore the time wasting on goal kicks and throw ins – it will be interesting to see what the UA ref analysis concludes.

    I was pleased with much of our performance and I am still confident in this team – the goals will come. I agree with Brickfields above, the rugbys did look tired at the end of the match and they were getting ragged at that stage – they were happy to hear the whistle.

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