- How clubs are avoiding accusations of the maltreatment of young players
- Injuries start to wreck Arsenal’s season before it gets going
For some Arsenal supporters (but not many journalists) the key issue of the moment is the choice of the referee for the game against Tottenham. It is not an issue for most of the media, as they will never get within a million miles of referee bias, and of course as usual when such a story arises, the media engages in deflection. This time it is the massive story of the colour of the Arsenal shirt. As The Telegraph reports on the home page of the football section of its website, Arsenal shirt deemed too white for north London derby.
The Mail of course really takes deflecting talk away from referee bias very seriously, and thus instead of this story goes with “With Martin Odegaard joining a long list of Arsenal absentees ahead of a huge north London derby, will Mikel Arteta finally turn to a 17-year-old wonderkid to solve Gunners’ selection crisis?”
The Independent has The unusual reason Arsenal are banned from wearing home kit in derby And that unusual reason is that, “the Gunners were told by the Premier League’s refereeing body (PGMOL) that their home shirt is “too white” and clashes with Spurs’ home kit.”
So credit must go to The Mirror however which is one of the very few that runs the real story of the match: the referee. They say,
“Mikel Arteta is unlikely to be happy after referee Jarred Gillett has been put in charge of the North London derby. Gillett left Arsenal fans incensed after failing to send off Wolves defender Yerson Mosquera for grabbing Kai Havertz around the throat on the opening weekend of the season.”
But you’ll notice the usual trick here. It is not that the referee got something wrong, but rather that Arsenal fans were incensed. The implication is that this is supporter bias – no ordinary right-minded person, the undercurrent suggests, would be worried.
But still, the Mirror continues, “The Aussie referee has been involved in several high-profile flashpoints involving the Gunners…. Incredibly, it will be the second time in four games that Gillett will have been in charge of Arsenal this season which may raise eyebrows considering his recent history,”
And that is a real change of direction – picking up on our eternal point that Arsenal keep getting the same referees.
Unfortunately, the Mirror deflects from its case by talking about issues relating to Wolverhampton, but they do then return ot the plot with “Gillett was also the referee involved in a controversial incident at Aston Villa last season when he disallowed Havertz’s last gasp effort with Arsenal insisting he could not have had a clear view to make a decision and then VAR did not overturn it.”
There is also a further point going back to the game against Manchester City game on 1 January 2022 when “referee Stuart Attwell initially did not give a penalty for Grant Xhaka’s challenge on Bernardo Silva. But Attwell overturned the decision and awarded a penalty to City after consulting his VAR.”
And the link? “Attwell is on VAR duty on Sunday.” It seems someone at the Mirror has started to take a real interest in refereeing.
So can anything good be said about Gillett as the referee? Well far be it from me to come to his defence, but actually there is something.
Refrerees as we know, generally have a home bias when it comes to overseeing Premier League games. Stuart Attwell for example, (who oversaw 26 Premier League games last season) found that 19 of them were home wins and only three were away wins.
But Gillett’s figures are very different. He oversaw 17 games last season and only five of them were home wins. Seven were away wins and five were draws. That gave Gillett an away win percentage of 41.2%, and only Craig Pawson, .Chris Kavanagh and Anthony Taylor saw higher percentages of away wins.
Not of course that this guarantees an away win, but it shows that Jarred Gillett is one of a small group who has heard that referees overall still work massively in favour of the home side and reacted against it, although that doesn’t stop him overseeing some home wins.
Now of course these are early days for the league but there is already one extraordinary statistic that I don’t think you will find reported in any media. This season there have been 11 home wins out of 30 games. Seven games have been draws and 12 have been away wins.
So again there is a sign that referee bias toward the home team might be ending. If you really want to study this in depth across many countries there is a fulsome academic review of the effect in Frontiers which itself in reviewing the situation notes “empirical studies have found referee bias in favor of the home team (Sutter and Kocher, 2004; Buraimo et al., 2010), suggesting that referee decisions can be influenced by social forces.”
If you want our own report on the issue it is at How referee bias works: the details and the statistics.
.But maybe just maybe a few referees are finally, finally, waking up to the way in which home crowds can seek to influence them, and are fighting back.
how about fillets decisions to rule out arsenals winner against palace a few years ago .. as corrupt a decision as you will ever see and never explained.
Despite claims to the contrary the standard of refereeing this season is down there with the worst I have ever seen.
And here we have another dose of double standards, or double talk, whatever you want to call it.
The first incident is when Yerson Mosquera appeared to attempt to strangle Kai Havertz.
This is the reason given why it wasn’t given as a red, or overturned by VAR.
“As he elaborated in a column for ESPN, Johnson stated that the reason why the Villarreal loanee was allowed to play on was that it was difficult to ascertain whether he was merely trying to prevent himself from doing any damage, or if there was a genuine act of violent conduct. Given the untidy nature of the tumble, it is easy to assume that the incident could have been completely accidental.”
So the reason given is you cannot be certain of what is in Mosqueras mind. We apparently can’t be sure Mosquera ‘knew what he was doing’.
Okay, I get it, these officials are not mind readers. But wait a minute, maybe they are?
When it comes to the KMI panels adjudication on Rices second Yellow card apparently part of the reason they agree with it is because “Rice knows what he’s doing, it’s a gentle touch but once the referee sees it, he has no choice.” .
So they ARE mind readers when it suits because in Rices case they are absolutely certain he knows what he’s doing.
Funny how they can pick and choose when they know what’s in a players mind and when they don’t.
They are saying absolutely anything to justify what I consider one of the worst decisions I have ever seen.
I will state these facts again because it still riles me, and I still haven’t seen one official address any of these points when it accesses the Veltman/Rice incident::
-The ball was moving meaning it would of had to be re taken anyway.
-The ball was not in the correct place meaning it would of had to be re taken anyway.
-Even if they are claiming the ball was in the correct place and not moving, it would of been resting at Rices ankle meaning Veltman was attempting to kick the ball at Rice, (who was retreating, ergo doing nothing wrong) which is illegal in the rules.
Another bend-over-backwards excuse to issue Rice a second yellow was the ball was touched ‘off the pitch’. According to Gallagher, because the ball was off the pitch Vertman then ‘couldn’t take the quick free kick’ he was attempting. But he couldn’t of took it from there, whether it was on the pitch or not, as it was IN THE WRONG PLACE. And it was primarily in the wrong place because Vertman kicked it AWAY from where the incident took place.
To say the referee was left ‘no choice’ means you first have to ignore at least 3 prior contraventions of the Laws Of The Game by Vertman. The major theme feeding into the justification of the referees decision is that he was correct BY THE LETTER OF THE LAW.
But if he was refereeing to The Letter Of The Law, surely by that measure he had to punish Vertman first, hence nullifying anything Rice may or may not of done subsequently.
I just cannot understand how these people are getting away with fobbing everyone off with these ridiculous, baseless assessments.
It is beyond a joke and I simply cannot understand why Arsenal have not said a word, after all they can hardly make things any worse because I think we can all already see where this season is heading with regards to how we are going to be refereed.
Plus, what about the Brighton player deliberately kicking Rice’s legs from under him? (plus the Dunk handball saving of White’s shot in the first half)
What about the foul on Saka at the end of the first half?
The referee chose to ignore it and blew the whistle to
end the first half? That was a yellow card offence.
PGMOL have ordered Arsenal to change to their away kit for the Tottenham match. Red shirts/white shorts vs. white shirts/navy shorts is not clear and obvious enough for Gillett/Attwell.
Australian ref for an Australian manager
A very apoosite point Porter
@seismic,
I think I read a comment somewhere, maybe even coming from Mr Arteta, saying the black kit was nice and one that psychologically impressed the opposition…. so… as far as I am concerned, I don’t give a rat’s ass about it. it is just the tree that the so-called press uses to hide the forest…
The season is just starting, nothing is done, and even after that game nothing will be. As long as Arsenal give it their best, I am fine. I am looking forward to seeing other players take charge and impress us.
And of course if a French Referee had been put in charge of a Wenger match nothing would have been said. Or indeed Spanish one put in charge Sunday? Yeah, right!