Do Arsenal really get twice as many red cards as other clubs?

By Tony Attwood

There has long been an assertion that Arsenal get many more cards than other teams, with the explanation being either that this is pure chance (unlikely), or through referee bias (never mentioned in the media), or by the inability of the manager to control his players.

Indeed as a piece on Reddit says,

“Arsenal have gotten about twice as many red cards as their opponents. Pretty significant difference. It could be a difference in the way the teams act, but certainly, if you feel Arsenal have gotten a bunch of softies, it’s hard to see the same being the case for the opponents with this few red cards to speak off.”

So, excusing the erratic grammar, that raises the question, are these numbers real. Do Arsenal really get twice as many red cards as their opponents, and if so why?

To answer this we need to know if it is just the opponent in that game in which Arsenal got a red card that Arsenal is being compared with, or was the writer talking about overall seasons? Or following the old Fleet Street tradition of simply making numbers up.

In thinking of that I realised that although I had written a lot about Arsenal’s slide to the bottom in terms of yellow cards, I had not touched the issue of reds.

I will try and rectify that below, but for the moment let’s catch up on yellow cards.

Arsenal were 19th in the yellow card table last season both when measured in terms of all yellow cards (for example 62 for Arsenal as opposed to 105 for Chelsea) and yellow cards for fouls (43 for Arsenal against 70 for Sheffield United).

Interestingly the one category of cards in which Arsenal were not 19th was yellow cards for “other” offences (other than fouls, unprofessional behaviour or diving, that is). Arsenal were tenth in that odd category, with 22 cards. This compares with 43 for Chelsea at one end of the table (what on earth were they getting up to?) and 15 for Manchester City at the other end. But what “other” includes, we are not told.

So there has been no real problem forArsenal in terms of yellow cards overall. But there is the oddity of the mysterious “other” category, and it is indeed typical of PGMO to have such a category through which it can dish out whatever punishment it feels like for crimes real or imagined.

So let us get back to the red cards and see what happened over time. Do Arsnal really get more red cards than other teams? Here are the numbers showing Arsenal’s position in the “red card league” at the end of each season, and the actual number of cards. As you can see the table works backwards through time.

2023/24: Arsenal 12^th (2 cards)
2022/23: Arsenal 20h (one of six clubs on zero red cards)
2021/22: Arsenal 2^nd (four cards)
2020/21: Arsenal 2^nd (five cards)
2019/20: Arsenal 1^st (five cards). Arteta joined in December 2019. World Football only shows 4 cards rather than five.
2018/19: Arsenal 9^th (two cards).

Of course, many clubs end up with the same number of cards – for example last season, Arsenal and five other teams got two cards, so you could say that Arsenal were 14^th in the list rather than ninth.

In relation to this we might also remember that VAR was introduced from 2019/20, and as noted above Arteta became manager in December that year.

But Reddit, whom I quoted at the top of the page, claims Arsenal 17 cards Opponents 9. And 17 is the right total between 2019/20 and now. But what does “opponents” mean?

I think it means the club in the games that Arsenal played in and got a red card. So what it doesn’t include are all the games in which Arsenal played and the opposition got a red card but Arsenal did not. Which makes the figures pretty useless – unless you are setting out to knock Arsenal with fairly meaningless statistics.

And “meaningless” is right as the figure of Arsenal 17 Opponents 9 suggests Arsenal get 89% more red cards than other clubs. Or (given the vagueness of the pronoucement) maybe 89% more than the average.

So let us consider 2020/21 when Arsenal got five red cards. Brighton actually got the most red cards that season with six. There were 51 cards in the league that season which means 2.55 per club on average. Arsenal were indeed running at double the average.

In 2021/22 Arsenal got four cards when the average was 2.1 cards per club. Still double the average.

In 2022/23 Arsenal got no cards. Wolverhampton were top of the league with six cards. Clearly a lesson had been learned.

In 2023/24 Arsenal got two cards. Top of the league were Burnley with seven. The average was 2.9 cards per club. Not as good as the previous campaign, but below the average.

So we can see that

In 2020/21 Arsenal got double the average number of cards.
In 2021/22 Arsenal got double the average number of cards
In 2022/23 Arsenal got no red cards and so were obviously bottom of the league for cards
In 2023/24 Arsenal got two cards Burnley were top with seven. Liverpool got five. But no one is allowed to criticise Liverpool.

.So what this “Arsenal have gotten about twice as many red cards as their opponents” is about I am not sure – but if it is about anything it is about days gone by. In the past two seasons Arsenal have got a below average number of red cards.

But here’s a thought: when someone does an article on Arsenal doing something wrong and doesn’t quote the exact timespan, or clear comparisons with others, or makes the data clear, then there could be a problem with the numbers. And even if not, it may not always have been Arsenal that was to blame. Remember Arsene Wenger’s run in with referee Taylor in 2000. That shows us a lot about PGMO and Arsenal. The story (hardly touched by the media) is here.

9 Replies to “Do Arsenal really get twice as many red cards as other clubs?”

Many thanks for the analysis on thr reddit post. Clearly needed an expert’s view on the matter.

I have been convinced since Arsene Wenger’s early days at Arsenal that referees in general and certain ones in particular were biased against Arsenal. This was reflected in their decisions across the whole spectrum of a match relative to how the particular opponents were treated. The award of red cards is part of this – remember how Vieira was treated.
The introduction of VAR has shifted the emphasis to double yellows, which, quite illogically, cannot be reviewed.

I remenber Oliver giving 2 yellows to Martinelli within a few seconds (against Villa). I believe that he was also the referee who avoided giving a second yellow to Rodri for a foul on Xhaka which was arguably worthy of a red card on its own. I recall Taylor playing advantage for Villa following a perceived foul by Szczesny and then reverting to the award of a penalty after an interval in which it was clear that the advantage did not work out for them. (He also sent Koscielny off later in the game).

Remember the notorious Riley performance in game 50 in which he ignored Ferdinand’s blatant red-card worthy offence to stop Ljungberg being though one-on-one with the keeper.

So, I have no doubt at all that Kavanagh deliberately chose to cheat Arsenal (after ignoring a blatant example of the same supposed offence by Brighton in the first-half, as well as the Dunk handball to divert White’s shot away from goal, which would have been a certain penalty against us if it had been Gabriel or Saliba (with at least a yellow card as well.) Incompetence is not the issue, nor does a complaint of inconsistency suffice. It is blatant cheating, no less.

That’s what I have been saying all along John. They are not so much stupid as they are crooked.

What sets the Arsenal red card situation apart from the other teams is the utterly bizarre and unique nature of so many of them. Rice, Martinelli, Tomiyasu, David Louis, Xhaka two or three times all victims of sendings off which would never have been inflicted on them had they not been wearing an Arsenal shirt. Referees always find a way to send an Arsenal player off, we have had to put up with it for years and it ain’t going to change.
Arsenal FC must know what is going on but I assume they consider it pointless trying to fight it for fear of making things worse.

At the next AGM and if Arteta is in attendance. Someone must ask if it was an eye opened for Arteta for ref calls between his time at City and now at Arsenal.

I think I saw the same stats elsewhere. I think the stats mean that Arsenal received 17 red cards in all PL games since the beginning of the 2019/2020 season. In the same games, our opponent received 9 red cards.

I checked the red cards stats on fbref.com for Arsenal matches since the beginning of 2019/2020 season. Arsenal have received 17 red cars and their opponents have receive 9 cards in the same matches.

It seems to me that the red card issue is a question of interpretation. If, for example, we got two a season when the average was three, then years we could be perceived as not being badly treated. However, if in matches we played, our opponents never received a red card whilst receiving all theirs (however many that might be) against other clubs, there is clearly a problem. Thus the fact that 9 cards were received by opponents against us suggests that whilst the average those clubs receive may be higher than us over all games, their average whilst playing us is exactly 0.5 which is well below the average for the season.

The article to which Tony is referring is, I believe, the link posted by Ben recently. This article also suggests that on average the red cards we received were much earlier in the game than those of our opponents. Again a problem. As Tony has argued many times, by yellow carding a player early in a game there is a tendency for that player to be more reserved in his play. It is all these nuances that make a difference.

Sorry, in my last post, I made a reference to 0.5 cards per season for opponents. Ignore that. I mistakenly interpreted the nine cards as having been given over a season which is obviously wrong. My overall premise, however, still stands.

Recent Posts

9 Replies to “Do Arsenal really get twice as many red cards as other clubs?”

Leave a Reply