How Arsenal kept their yellow card total under control last seeason

 

 

 

By Tony Attwood

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Last season Tottenham put in 41% more tackles than Manchester City.  As a result,  Tottenham committed 47% more fouls than Manchester City but given the referees’ propensity for treating clubs in different ways, ended up getting on for 84% more yellow cards from fouls than Manchester City.

Which by and large makes it look like a rather silly and ultimately pointless tactic.  It is the sort of thing that newspapers might look at …. except the decisions as to what is a foul and what is a yellow card offence is something decided by referees, and by and large, the media don’t investigate what referees do.

Indeed only one of the top clubs last season tried to emulate Manchester City’s approach of reducing the level of tackling and that was Aston Villa who undertook just six per cent more tackles than Manchester City during the course of the season.   And yet they were deemed to have committed 13.8% more fouls and ended up (amazingly) with 90% more yellow cards for fouls than Manchester City.

Indeed that is so amazing I think it is worth running again.

Aston Villa committed 13.8% more fouls than Manchester City but got 90% more yellow cards because of fouls than Manchester City. 

And to be clear in case you have now looked at our figures on these matters before, the reports that we use do separate out yellow cards for fouls from other yellow cards.    See this Who Scored page and then scroll down to the second level of statistics.

What strikes me here is not so much that there is this difference, because we know from years of analysis that referees treat different clubs in different ways, but Aston Villa simply carried on using the same technique and not changing it, to overcome referee bias.  Mind you their manager made the same mistake when he was at Arsenal (although that’s a different story). 

Here are the basic numbers – they are all freely available but you will not find them reported very often in the media – which is why we publish them.. 

 

 

So let’s look at the overall figures for last year in terms of best and worst.

The club with the worst record of fouling when tackling is Aston Villa, and the club with the worst record for getting yellow cards for tackling is Aston Villa.

But now it gets weird.  Because the club only just behind Aston Villa in terms of having a really bad record for fouling when tackling is Liverpool.  And yet despite all those fouls referees will hardly ever give cards to Liverpool.

Let’s just compare those two clubs for these basic measurements.

Aston Villa can commit 1.33 tackles before a foul is given, while Liverpool can commit 1.46 tackles before a foul is given.  Very similar numbers.

Yet Aston Villa can only commit 8.97 tackles before a card is waved while Liverpool can commit 15.36 tackles before getting a card. 

So Liverpool can commit 71% more tackles than Aston Villa before a yellow card is waved!!!!!

Not surprisingly Liverpool can get away with many more fouls before a card is waved – more than anyone else in our list of the top clubs of last season (in terms of the league table) – and this situation has been like this year on year as we have analysed these figures.

However, when we first started looking at these figures Arsenal were really at the wrong end of the table.  But these days although Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham can all put in more tackles before a foul is blown, only Liverpool and Manchester City can put in more tackles without getting a card.

And when we come to the number of fouls per card only Liverpool, the perennial referee favourites, can put in more fouls before getting a card.  (And of course when we say fouls, what we mean is “fouls according to the referee”).

Aston Villa’s lack of experience of being near the top is showing here – they are only putting in 6.72 fouls before they get a card.  Arsenal can put in over half as many again before getting the card.

The solution for Tottenham is obvious – cut out the tackling.  And I don’t mind saying it here, because I’ve said it several times before but they never learn and their supporters think that anything said on an Arsenal site must be wrong.  Besides they have the most profitable ground in the league (according to their correspondents).

But even so you might think the club might one day realise just where they are going wrong.