- Martin Ødegaard does the right thing, and what the media absolutely won’t tell you about Arsenal
- Lower points than last season? In fact Arsenal are actually doing just as well
By Tony Attwood
According to the Guardian, “PGMOL has lobbied hard for greater prominence in the process finding a platform to display in more acute detail both the limitations of those involved, the impossible nature of the job…”
OK shall we hold it at this point? PGMOL (as it likes to be called, the “L” standing for “Limited” meaning there is a limit on how much you could sue the organisation for if you actually felt that was a worthwhile thing to do) describes itself as a “not-for-profit company limited by guarantee owned and funded by the Premier League, EFL, and the FA”.
So when we hear that “PGMOL has lobbied hard for greater prominence in the process of finding a platform to display in more acute detail “the limitations of those involved,” what the newspaper is actually saying is that the organisation (which is effectively owned by the Leagues and the FA) is asking the Leagues and the FA (who own it) if the limitations which PGMOL (which are put on the organisations by the Leagues and FA) could have more publicity.
In short could the people who pay the referees’ organisation not do articles on how varied and weird the decisions of those referees are? Errr…. that seems rather unlikely.
Now from here on I am going to stop using the “L” in PGMOL in the same way that I don’t write Arsenal Ltd or The Premier League Ltd, or the FA Ltd, so I don’t see why we are now noting that PGMO is Ltd. Of course they are not going to allow themselves to be challenged in court for millions upon millions of pounds, so they are Ltd. Surely we all knew that.
As for saying that “Howard Webb’s [the Chief Refereeing Officer] tenure has been soundtracked by constant calls for more transparency, for a swishing back of the curtain to reveal the bare-forked referee beneath the starry facade,” well, let’s think about this. Why might PGMO actually want to be rather secretive?
One reason is that 20% of Michael Oliver’s matches have been home wins this season, while 83.3% of Peter Bankes games this season have been home wins.
Or if we want to take in a whole season rather than just a part of the season how about last season when Jarred Gillett had 47.6% away wins while Robert Jones had 13.6% of his games end up as away wins?
Now I am not saying they should all have the same figures, but since all the research in the period of the pandemic when games were played without a crowd confirmed, backed up previous research on just how much the crowd influences the referees, we can understand why that research is not being done in public by PGMO.
For what is clear is that some referees have taken no notice of the research and still allow themselves to be influenced by crowds, while others have swung dramatically in the opposite direction.
And yet in this era in which no one but ourselves and WhoScored report the referee bias that we see season after season, what the Guardian says is “What we have here is full transparency. What the footage shows us is just how difficult this hyper-evolved job has become, how stretched those being asked to cover these angles are, and how vulnerable those watching it are to the suggestion their sport is putrid, shot, rigged and essentially rotten.” And what the stats show us without all that hyperbole but with figures that can be checked, is that quite clearly some referees are home-biased and others away-biased.
And of course we don’t just have to look at results. We can look, for example at fouls per game, and again restricting ourselves to referees who saw over 20 Premier League games last season we find….
David Coote saw 24.69 fouls per game on average while Samuel Barrott saw 20.12 fouls per game. That is to say Coote spotted 23% more fouls per game in every game through the whole of last season. Put another way Coote gave 395 fouls in 16 games while Barrott gave 302 in 15. Taking that up to 16 games by applying the average and we get 322 fouls.
Two referees in the same league, and one across a season somehow sees 73 more fouls than the other. Really??? And this is with VAR support in case they are ever not sure!!!
Or to do it another way (and I could go on trotting out these statistics over several articles, but I know everyone would get bored stiff), Paul Tierney across 25 games gave 3.52 yellow cards per game while David Coote gave out 5.19 yellow cards per game. That is over 47% more Cootian yellows than Tiernian yellows.
And don’t think the clubs don’t know this. They see who they have got as the ref and adjust their games accordingly.
But if you want one really crazy total, consider last season. Chelsea knocked up 105 yellow cards compared to Arsenal’s 62. And yet the media have until a couple of days back been going on and on and on and on about Arsenal’s three red cards this season while still ignoring Chelsea’s record yellow total last season, and the fact that they are again way ahead in this season’s yellow league. And yet Reddit is still running articles asking “When did Arsenal fans become whinier”. Answer: When PGMO went on the march.
And oh yes, in case you are interested, Arsenal’s yellow cards for this season are running at just around half of Chelsea’s. And that is with PGMO (L) officials overseeing each game.
So why does the media and PGMO (L) each carry on in this manner?
Well, that is a matter for you to decide. But what few if any of these articles even get near to considering is, maybe we are fed up with PGMO because PGMO is either biased or incompetent. Or both. Otherwise how do you explain the official figures?
And so one may ask, why is that final option (that there is something wrong with PGMO, either accidentally or deliberately) never debated? If you want to ponder media bias, surely that abject refusal to engage in such a discussion, while deflecting any discussion they do run to arguments about a single issue, is a perfect example.
Oh yes and if you want another example of media bias, have a quick read of the second of the two articles at the top of the page: Lower points than last season? In fact Arsenal are actually doing just as well.
