Arsenal v Leicester City 10 February 2015 – The Match Officials

Arsenal v Leicester City 10 February 2015 – The Match Officials

by Andrew Crawshaw

Here is the wrong Important Decisions Table updated following Walter’s review of the Aston Villa game.  Overall this was the best refereeing performance Arsenal have seen this year getting Mr Taylor an 85% overall weighting – mind that is the standard of refereeing we should have every week not something to celebrate.  His bias was still ‘Taylorian’ 100% against Arsenal however, there were no wrong Important Decisions (second yellow, red cards, penalties or goals).

Wrong Important Decisions	Favouring Arsenal	Favouring Opponents
2nd Yellow Cards	0	14
Red Cards	3	13
Penalties	3	14
Goals	0	6
Total	6	47
Possible Cost in Points	2	23

The preview for Tuesday

• Referee – Mike Jones
• Assistants – M Scholes and M McDonough
• Fourth Official – A Taylor

Mike Jones was born in 1968, his home FA is Cheshire and has been a referee in the premier league since August 2008 when he started with Hull City v Wigan.  Prior to that he was a Football League referee for 11 years.  Coincidentally his first Football League game in August 1997 also featured Hull City who were away to Mansfield Town.  To date he has been in charge of 140 matches issuing 19 red and 444 yellow cards (a red card every 7.4 games and 3.2 yellow cards a game on average).

This will be the second time this year that we will have had My Jones,he was in charge of our away game at Villawhere he put in a decent performance – 82% overall (best in the first half of the season), bias against both teams 20/80 and 1 wrong Important Decision when in Min 83 he should have sent off Clark for a reckless challenge on Podolski.  He should also have issued two yellows to Villa players but overall a pretty good performance.

Ref Review Aston Villa – Arsenal

In 2012/13 he was in charge of

Match Review: Michael Jones – Arsenal Vs West Bromwich Albion (2 – 0) [08/12/2012]

He scored 69% overall, Bias against 52/48 and two wrong Important Decisions (second yellow, red cards, penalty and goal) when he wrongly awarded Arsenal a penalty in the 24th minute following a dive from Cazorla.  The penalty conversion shouldn’t have counted either.

Match Review: Michael Jones – Arsenal Vs Norwich City (3 – 1) [13/04/2013]

60% overall, bias against 73/27 and four wrong key decisions.  In Min 45+1 Turner should have been sent off for elbowing Ramsey, In Minute 55 there was a dive from a Norwich player to win a free kick from which they scored, the Norwich player should have had a yellow card and the free kick should have been given to Arsenal. In min 64 Snodgrass fouled Walcott in the penalty area but no penalty was awarded and in Min 90+1 Theo scored a goal but was offside in the buildup so the goal shouldn’t have counted.  Not Mr Jones finest game as a referee.

Overall for the year he had 15 wrong key decisions in the 9 games he was reviewed,  of these 7 were penalties, 3 were sending offs and 5 were incorrect goal decisions.  None of these errors are acceptable  His overall scores were 70% or less in four games and 80% or better in three.  A strong home bias in two games, neutral bias in 5 games and a strong away bias in the other two games.  Not really up to scratch overall, could do better

In 2013/14 Mr Jones was in charge of 19 games in total, 11 home wins, three draws and 5 away wins.  Two games involved Arsenal:-

Stoke v Arsenal  1st Mar 2014 (1-0)  A one sided piece of refereeing by Mr Jones, Adams should have been sent off in the middle of the second half for a clear stamp on Giroud who was on the floor at the time (see the second link below).  He then gave a very soft penalty in favour of Stoke, Walters kicked the ball Kos was about a metre away and the ball hit his hand as he was jumping to attempt to block it.  The assistant who was close didn’t move but Mr Jones was convinced.

Home referee as predicted, bad day at the office not as predicted

FA charges Adam, Riley phones Wenger… or did he?

Arsenal v West Brom 4 May 2014 (1-0)  This time we were at home – did the referee perform any better?  Here is Walter’s post match article, he was at the game.  We scored the only goal in the first half and never looked like conceding.  From my recollection the ref was OK and West Brom were not good.

Arsenal – WBA, after the beginning now on to the match…

Not a mention of Mr Jones so again an OK performance.

So dreadful in our away game at Stoke, OK for our home game, broadly in line with our expectations.

Untold Arsenal

 

In summary

 

1. Mr Jones did well in our away game to Villa this year
2. Mr Jones tends to be a home referee
3. Mr Jones is not that good overall
4. Mr Jones is particularly poor in judging penalties
5. Mr Jones is also poor at disciplinary offences, both yellow and red cards
6. As Walter said “Give me Jones any day of the week in a home match and I don’t fear him. Give him an away game against a footballing team and I don’t fear him. Give him in an away game against a kick the shit team and expect the worst. Remember this for the future.”
7. We are at home so that’s one box ticked, Leicester were certainly physical when we played them in August with Mr Taylor in charge. On balance i think that Arsenal have enough quality to ensure that this will be a comfortable home win whatever Mr Jones throws at us.

 

COYG