Arsenal v Sunderland 5 December 2015 – The Match Officials
by Andrew Crawshaw
As I write this (Wed PM) there hasn’t been a referee review published this week so the Table of Shame remains as I gave it last week:-
| Wrong Important Decisions | Favouring Arsenal | Favouring Opponents |
| 2nd Yellow Cards | 0 | 14 |
| Red Cards | 0 | 7 |
| Penalties | 1 | 11 |
| Goals | 0 | 4 |
| Total | 1 | 36 |
| Possible Cost in Points | 0 | 9 |
This Saturday we are at home to Sunderland in a rare 3PM kick off. The Officials are :-
- Referee – Robert Madley
- Assistants – M Perry and P Kirkup
- Fourth Official – J Simpson
Firstly a warm welcome to Mr Simpson who, as far as I know, is a newcomer to Arsenal (at least in the role of fourth official). He is a Lancastrian who normally plies his trade as a referee in the Football League at Championship or lower level. He has been in charge of 14 games this season issuing 45 yellow, two red cards and one penalty.
Mr Perry has been an Assistant Referee on 14 occasions this year, once in an Arsenal game when he was part of the refereeing team for the Newcastle v Arsenal game. I noted nothing terrible from the review of that game.
Mr Kirkup has also been busy assisting in 13 games, none involving Arsenal.
Robert Madley is also a first time visitor this year (and only his second in the PL), this will be his 11th game of the season. He is from West Yorkshire (home association West Riding FA). His first Premier League match was Southampton v West Brom on April 27 2013 and at 30 years of age he is still relatively young for a top flight referee. To date he has been in charge of 27 matches and has issued 7 red and 84 yellow cards. This week will see him match the number of games he officiated in the whole of last season, so he is clearly now trusted to do the job.
2012/13 |
2013/14 |
2014/15 |
2016/16 |
|
| No of PL games | 1 | 5 | 11 | 11 |
Last season he was in charge of our last game of the season the 4 – 1 victory over West Brom, for which we do not have a full referee review. Here is Walter’s post game review:-
Arsenal – WBA, 4-1 a Theo hattrick and a great Jack strike
key refereeing point was – W Brom No 25 elbowing Coquelin in the face, ignored by the ref., well we were three up at that point. A great first half performance from Arsenal with a hat-trick from Theo and a sublime volley from Wilshere. A superb start and game over effectively in the first 18 minutes with the third goal.
In 2013-14 Robert Madley only refereed 5 Premier League games, none involving Arsenal.
Summary
- There is really no proper data to draw on for an accurate assessment of Mr Madley in Arsenal games.
- Last Season’s West Brom game is available in full on Arsenal Player for any of you to dip into and make up your own minds.
- For now I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt over the Coquelin incident but, rest assured Mr Madley, we will have our beady eyes on you on Saturday so please do the job fairly and without prejudice.
COYG
Hope that he has not been infected with whatever has infested the PIGMOB !
Because of some strange error this only now came online after thet match. Sorry about that.
There really wasn’t anything to go on with him only having done one Arsenal game before and that one not having a full analysis so it really wouldn’t have added much to the build up.
typical pigmob, missed a couple of yellows for sunderland, didn’t give a penalty for a foul on Giroud, ignored time wasting (which started around 20 minute)
Campbell might have been a couple of inches offside for the first goal though