Which clubs are getting up the league by raising the number of fouls committed?

 

 

 

By Tony Attwood

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This season has seen an explosion in the world of yellow cards in the Premier League with some clubs becoming notorious for the number of cards they have picked up.  Chelsea for example have collected 56, Aston Villa and Brighton each have 48 and Tottenham Hotspur have received 47 plus four reds.

At this rate Chelsea will end up with 118 cards, whereas last season they received 77 – a 53% increase.  Put another way that is more than half as many again as previously.

OK so maybe that is Chelsea – they are perhaps just going mad on bad tackles as they are on bad transfers.   But what about the media’s new favourite: Aston Villa?   They have had 48 cards meaning that if the current rate continues they will end up with 107.    Last season they got 80 – which means they are heading for a 34% increase this season.  Not as big an increase as Chelsea but still pretty large.

Now one of the main areas of expansion for yellow cards has been “unprofessional conduct” which the PGMO seems reluctant to define, but examples have been given to include…

• Arguing with officials over a decision.
• Persistent fouling, with none of the individual fouls being worthy of a card, but continuing after the referee has given warnings about future behaviour.
• Diving as if one has been tackled
• Serious foul play
• Delaying the restart of the game after a foul, goal, award of a corner etc
• Dissent either by arguing with the official or by an action (such as an arm action) to indicate contempt or disregard for the official and his/her decision
• Using vulgar or coarse language
• Violent conduct
• Disrespecting opponents
• Unsporting behaviour
• Entering the referee review area
• Lack of respect for officials
• Spitting

R	Team	Fouls	Unprofessional	Other
1	Sheffield United	39	2	18
2	Chelsea	32	5	18
3	West Ham United	31	1	14
4	Nottingham Forest	30	6	8
5	Aston Villa	30	3	16
6	Tottenham Hotspur	30	3	20
7	Burnley	28	0	11
8	Everton	27	2	9
9	Fulham	27	1	16
10	Brentford	26	4	11
11	Manchester United	25	2	17
12	Brighton & Hove Albion	25	4	21
13	Crystal Palace	24	1	12
14	Newcastle United	24	4	14
15	Wolverhampton	24	5	22
16	Arsenal	22	0	8
17	Luton Town	22	0	12
18	Liverpool	19	3	15
19	Bournemouth	17	3	14
20	Manchester City	16	7	11

 

So what might these “other” reasons be?   I can’t find anything official from PGMO to describe “other” situations – and of course we know from years of experience that where they can make things more obscure they will always do so – but hints that we can pick up suggest we might well be looking at reckless fouls, trips, kicks, diving, the excessive celebration of a goal, verbally distracting an opponent, and sarcastic words and actions.

What we do know however is that Tottenham Hotspur have put in more tackles than any other team this season – averaging 20.4 tackles per game.   They are also fouled more than any other team with 14.9 fouls against them per game.  This would suggest the two activities are related – the more a team tackles and fouls, the more it gets fouled in return.   If that is right, then it is another reason for clubs to lay off fouling, and another suggestion that Arsenal are getting this right..

But the contrast between Arsenal and Tottenham does lead to an interesting discussion, for those interested in unravelling which approaches to playing are working best these days.

WhoScored has a listing of Premier League teams organised by their own rating procedure which takes into account a range factors but does not include how many times each team commits a foul.    We’ve taken the top dozen clubs in that ranking and then added the number of fouls per game, so that we can see if each club in the top rankings is fouled by others more than it commits fouls, or vice versa.

In this table the numbers show us the number of offences per game.   So Fouled pg shows the number of times the club is fouled per game and Fouls pg the number of fouls the club commits per game.   That allows us to create the final column showing whether the club is fouled more than it fouls, or vice versa.

The clubs that are committing more fouls than the number of times they are fouled are shown in red.

 

Now this is interesting because the only clubs in the group that we have been looking at which commit more fouls than they receive are all clubs that we might consider to be engaged in the less creative side of the game – except for Liverpool and Manchester United.  

Liverpool are considered by most to be engaged in interesting and exciting football, and they are highly praised by the media for this.  

And yet they are fouling more than they are fouled – as are Machester United.

Now with Man U we might expect this, as they are struggling somewhat in the league, and trying to find any means possible to get back into the top group, but looking at these figures what becomes clear is that Liverpool have carried themselves up the league with a vigorous and indeed illegal form of football generally more associated with Leeds’ attempts to win the league than the way Liverpool are portrayed in the media.

I’ll try and take this further in a future article