By Bulldog Drummond
Arsenal remain the lowest tackling club in the Premier League – Sheffield United have engaged in 35% more tackles than Arsenal during the course of this season. Although not as many as Leicester City who have put in 46% more tackles than Arsenal.
| Team | Tackles | Fouls | Tackles/foul | Yellows | Fouls/Yellow |
| Sheffield United | 490 | 372 | 1.32 | 57 | 6.53 |
| Arsenal | 363 | 278 | 1.31 | 41 | 6.78 |
| Leicester | 530 | 315 | 1.68 | 52 | 6.06 |
| Liverpool | 407 | 303 | 1.34 | 33 | 9.18 |
What is so interesting however is how the referees then treat the clubs. Sheffield United, Arsenal and Liverpool all have fouls called in the same sort of order – between 1.31 and 1.34 tackles results in a foul. But Leicester can get away with 27% more tackles than other teams before a foul is called – giving them a huge advantage in defence.
But then look at the yellow cards that result. Arsenal have clearly learned their lesson and are slowly, through the season, tackling ever more carefully, and have 41 yellows. But Liverpool who have committed 25 more fouls than Arsenal still have eight fewer yellow cards.
It is when we see the final column we can see the staggering benefit Liverpool have in every game – they can commit 9.18 fouls before getting a yellow card. Mere mortals like Arsenal are on 6.78.
This is a staggering difference and one that the media utterly refuse to engage with, for the simple reason it casts serious doubt on what is going on between referees and Liverpool. Remember this is fouls against yellow cards – so the referee has already called the fouls, and yet he persistently won’t give out yellows when the foul is committed by a Liverpool player.
Maybe Liverpool have developed the ultimate in rotational fouling – maybe Arsenal should look and see what else is to be learned.
But to return to the Arsenal match. Both Sheffield United and Arsenal are penalised for tackles by fouls in the normal way, around the 1.32 level of tackles per fouls. But Sheffield United either haven’t learned how to play the referees or they really are a bunch of hearty roughs who deserve all those extra cards.
Sheffield United get more yellows than anyone else in fact… Here is the top 12.
| Pos | Club | Yellow cards |
| 1. | Sheffield United | 57 |
| 2. | Fulham | 56 |
| 3. | Newcastle United | 53 |
| 4. | Leicester City | 52 |
| 5. | Manchester United | 50 |
| 6. | Aston Villa | 48 |
| 7. | Everton | 48 |
| 8. | Leeds United | 46 |
| 9. | Southampton | 43 |
| 10. | Wolverhampton Wanderers | 43 |
| 11. | Tottenham Hotspur | 42 |
| 12. | Arsenal | 41 |
For what it is worth, my view is that Arsenal have realised just how they can get themselves done over by the referees and so have amended their style of play, by cutting right back on the tackling. We now tackle less than any other team, in order to keep the players on the pitch. But this survival has come at a price in terms of how effective the defence can be.
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Manchester City | 31 | 23 | 5 | 3 | 66 | 21 | 45 | 74 |
| 5 | Chelsea | 30 | 14 | 9 | 7 | 46 | 30 | 16 | 51 |
| 9 | Aston Villa | 29 | 13 | 5 | 11 | 42 | 31 | 11 | 44 |
| 6 | Tottenham Hotspur | 30 | 14 | 7 | 9 | 51 | 32 | 19 | 49 |
| 2 | Manchester United | 30 | 17 | 9 | 4 | 58 | 33 | 25 | 60 |
| 3 | Leicester City | 30 | 17 | 5 | 8 | 53 | 34 | 19 | 56 |
| 10 | Arsenal | 30 | 12 | 6 | 12 | 40 | 35 | 5 | 42 |
I am still surprised at how much the “experts” ramble on about our defence, when across 30 games we have let in just five more than Chelsea, despite having the handicap of how refs treat us. If one wants to start sorting out Arsenal then the way to do it is to amend the attack where we are 18 goals behind the second best attack in the league after 30 games.
And that is what we are doing with the use of Odegaard, Smith Rowe and Saka. For me all this talk of changing the whole team round and needing “at least six” new players (a story that has been doing the rounds since 2017) is nonsense. The defence is, even in a poor season such as this one, within a few goals of the second best team in the league. If we need something new it is one new player in the attack.
But this should not worry us too much against Sheffield United – the goal difference between the two clubs is 17 goals across the season, which suggests maybe a 2-1 win.
The proof that something is seriously wrong with football refereeing and reporting
- How even a serious science magazine has used fake data on football
- Someone is trying to fake football stats – and doing it rather well,
- Crowdless stadia stats reveal fallacy of PGMO claims
- Proving unconscious bias by referees
- How clubs manipulate referees through their tactics
- Referees are not 98% accurate but only 75% accurate
