- Why there is nothing particularly wrong with this Arsenal team
- Are Arsenal falling apart or really were they never any good?
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According to the BBC Arsenal have a big discipline problem, with three red cards this season. And yes it is true Arsenal have had three reds in the league. No other club has this, but a couple of clubs have two red cards.
That looks utterly shocking. But as we have found in the past the figures that become journalistic headlines are often somewhat misleading, although the journalists always take them as absolute proof. So let’s have a look.
We certainly know one of those red cards was really weird. Declan Rice was sent off against Brighton for picking up a second yellow card for kicking the ball away. I am not sure about this but I can’t recall every player who has tapped the ball back a yard getting a yellow card, but maybe I have missed them.
But that opening thought raises a point – if Arsenal really are this ultimately dirty team and this has already knocked out their chances of getting to the title, then let’s take a look at something with a few more yellow card numbers.
Yellows is a more reliable measure of discipline since the numbers are bigger than for reds, obviously. After all with red cards, the numbers are so small that it is difficult to get a full grasp on the statistics, although we might well express some wonderment that Arsenal have gone from 12th last season to top this season.
And here of course the journalists’ old trick of never asking “why?” come in to support them. “How come Arsenal have got so dirty?” would be an interesting question demanding some evidence by way of reply. But no, the media just say Arsenal are ill-disciplined – not asking why they have changed so much (unless of course it is not that Arsenal have changed but maybe something in the refereeing has changed…. but that of course is unthinkable.
But let’s look at something with a few more numbers. Yellow cards. This season Liverpool, Manchester City and Arsenal all are equal on 18 yellow cards , and only five clubs have fewer. So that is a bit strange to start with. Right near the bottom of the yellow list but right up at the very top of the red list.
Last season Arsenal were 19th in the yellow card table with only slightly over half of the number for table-topping Chelsea. And wouldn’t you know it, Chelsea are top of the yellow card table again. Now isn’t that a bigger story – last season’s yellow card champions have not learned their lesson and are powering away at the top of the yellow card table once more? But no, no one wants that story, because, well, …you have to decide why.
But back to red cards – yes Arsenal are top of the league with three – more than they got all last season. So why? Certainly one of those is very odd: Trossard who has not had a single yellow all season getting a red – just the statistic seems weird. Calafiori is the leader with three yellows – and it is noticeable that he came to England this year from Italy – and obviously Arsenal should have done more to tell him something about PGMO referees.
But there are other oddities too: yellows normally go to defenders but Gabriel Jesus has picked up two while keepers normally get no yellows but David Raya has one this season. In fact Odegaard has one this season despite being injured for much of the campaign, whereas he got two in 45 games last season. Saliba got four in the whole of last season, this season he manages to get two in one game.
Ceertainly PGMO are doing one of their infamous unilateral changes of the rules without the rules actually being changed activities, and we have seen this before. At the current rate Chelsea will end up with 143 yellow cards, Manchester United 124 while Arsenal will be in 15th position equal with Manchester City with 85. A huge number but that’s because the referees are waving their arms around a lot.
The fact is that yes Arsenal have three red cards this campaign, and certainly the media has seized upon this suggesting that the club is utterly out of control, Arteta should be deported, the ground shut down, and Manchester City awarded the league without the bother of any more games. I may have got a bit carried away there, but it is a fact that Arsenal and Tottenham both have the same number of yellow cards thus far is not mentioned.
The reality is measuring a metric where the possible numbers are 0, 1, 2 or 3 for the participating clubs is dubious, but if it has to be done, we ought to look at how those cards came about, and the fact is one-third of them were for Rice tapping the ball back a couple of years, as every defender has done since the start of football. I’m not sure I have seen too many other players get a yellow for that before or since.
In short this is all a PGMO game, and yes of course Arsenal have to adjust to it, just as they have to adjust to PGMO every season. The media will churn out their nonsense, but the worst thing any of us can do is believe that nonsense. Because in the end, it is simply, media nonsense just as it was last year and the year before and….
Clearly “something else is, indeed, going on”.
No other team would have had red cards for comparable “offences” – a case in point was the Chelsea player yesterday who got a yellow for doing exactly what Saliba had done on Saturday, with unanimous agreement from all commentators that a red was not warranted.
Many of our yellow cards are also dubious – Ben White for supposedly delaying a throw-in, Gabriel Jesus for objecting to being indecently assaulted etc.
Remember when Xhaka was routinely given a yellow card for his first tackle in a match?
The referee on Saturday could barely conceal his delight at having the chance to send off our player and I do not accept that Webb was not involved in the process which led to it. If he was truly innocent, why would Sky have been in such haste to dismiss any notion to the contrary?