Previously….
- Aston Villa v Arsenal; the game of phases and the home/away difference
- Aston Villa v Arsenal: what the last six results tell us will happen
- Aston Villa v Arsenal: the transfers, the centre forward and 52 years since winning the 3rd division
By Bulldog Drummond
There is, in the Premier League a massive difference between the way teams play which is revealed by the level of tackles, fouls and cards. For example, the most-tackling team (Crystal Palace) tackled over 60% more last season than the least-tackling team (Manchester City). Palace put in 809 tackles while Manchester C put in 486.
Arsenal knocked up 596 tackles – they were 18th in the tackling table. Aston Villa were on 572 tackles in 19th place. So today is the battle of the non-tacklers.
Looking at fouls Manchester City is again at the bottom with 288 fouls and Bournemouth tackled the most with 505 fouls – heading towards double the Man C level. Arsenal were 15th in the fouling table with 391 fouls.
Finally if we look at yellow cards from fouls, Manchester City got 32 yellow cards from fouls and that was the lowest number in the League. Arsenal were in 19th place with 43 cards from fouls and Aston Villa were near the top with 61 yellow cards from fouls. So today it is the foulers against the clean club.
In this article we are using the data from last season…
| Team | Tackles pg | Fouls pg | Yellows PG from fouls |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crystal Palace | 21.3 | 12.1 | 1.29 |
| Everton | 20.3 | 11.1 | 1.47 |
| Tottenham | 20 | 10.9 | 1.55 |
| Arsenal | 15.7 | 10.3 | 1.13 |
| Aston Villa | 14.4 | 11.1 | 1.60 |
| Manchester City | 12.8 | 7.8 | 1.37 |
Arsenal have clearly got their tackling right – they are getting far fewer yellow cards from tackling than rival teams. So although Manchester City took the approach of reducing their tackling dramatically in order to avoid fouls and being booked, Arsenal have reduced tackling but also made the tackles less likely to cause the referee to wave a card above his head.
But we can also look at not just yellow cards from tackles, but all yellow cards generally. Last season the level ranged from 105 yellows for Chelsea down to 52 for Manchester City at the bottom of the yellow league and 62 tor Arsenaal in 19th. This was a very good move for Arsenal given how much yellows can influence how a player plays for the rest of the game, and of course who can be selected once the cards start mounting up. Quite what Chelsea were doing picking up double the number of cards that Manchester City got is a matter for debate: was it their style of play or the referees not liking Chelsea? Or maybe Chelsea’s endless change of management.
Now running those figures from last season one leapt out at me – Aston Villa’s 94 yellow cards. They were not the highest – as we have seen – but even so it was 51% more yellow cards than Arsenal. But that was achieved with Arsenal tackling nine percent more than Villa.
The only possible conclusion here is that some of those yellow cards were for pretty horrendous challenges that were quite possibly threatening to break a player’s leg. If there is another explanation for being 19th in the table for tackling, seventh in the table for fouls and fourth in the table for yellow cards last season, it would be very helpful to hear it. There is of course the possible argument that referees are against Aston Villa, but there are two other issues to answer here:
The first is why this has happened (there really must be some explanation why referees pick on a certain club or don’t pick on others) and the second is why the club doesn’t change its style of play to suit the referees, as indeed Arsenal have done.
In this case, Chelsea with their constant change of senior management have not helped themselves because few people come into the Premier League from elsewhere fully understanding just how weird the ultra-secretive PGMO actually is.
Another curious fact is the number of times Villa are fouled in a game. Last season it was 12.4 – only Tottenham were fouled more; Arsenal were fouled 10.4 times a game. That leads me to think that Aston Villa, when fouled, had a greater likelihood of retaliating which in turn led to picking up more yellows – they were the fourth-highest club for yellows, coming in just behind the dirty squad: Chelsea, Wolverhampton and Sheffield United.
But the overriding fact is that Chelsea got twice as many yellow cards last season (for all reasons) as Manchester City, and if we want to note one thing that held Chelsea back, that was probably it.
We’ll look at the ratios in the next piece.
