By Bulldog Drummond
The referee today is Chris Kavanagh, and as we often do, we take a look at the variation between referees, showing that to some degree which result a club gets depends on which referee the club gets. Here are this season’s figures of today’s referees compared with others of the same ilk.
| Referee | Games | Fouls pg | Yellows pg |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.Anthony Taylor | 19 | 21.79 | 3.47 |
| 3.Chris Kavanagh | 14 | 21.14 | 5.00 |
| 6.Robert Jones | 13 | 26.54 | 4.69 |
| 8.Peter Bankes | 12 | 18.08 | 3.83 |
| 11.John Brooks | 10 | 23.60 | 5.60 |
| Variation | 47% | 61% |
Chis Kavanagh is a man who I suspect has read the reports from the coronavirus period and has accepted the findings that show how influenced referees can be by the crowd – a basis which ensures that there are far more home wins than away wins in the league each season.
This season there have so far been 67 away wins and 83 home wins showing that home advantage is still there, despite all the work done during the pandemic to show that this bias primarily comes from referees being influence by the noise of the crowd.
But because that is how it is, some referees have reacted against this and are now showing a bias against home teams. This is indeed the pattern we can see from a review of Kavanagh’s activities as referee this season.
This referee, as a matter of course, is giving out more fouls against home teams and more yellow cards against home teams, than against away teams, and this happens throughout this season. Home teams, according the Kavanagh create 13% more fouls than away teams, and as a result get 42% more yellow cards than away teams. It is one of the biggest biases in favour of away teams that you can find in the Premier League – and of course it is interesting that a) the Premier League does nothing at all to help Kavanagh see what he is doing, and as a result nothing to help him overcome his bias. Except of course insist that the mainstream media never mention this
| Referee | Games | Fouls pg | Yel pg |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chris Kavanagh home | 14 | 11.21 | 2.93 |
| Chris Kavanagh away | 14 | 9.93 | 2.07 |
| Bias | 13% | 42% |
This bias thus leaves Arsenal at a disadvantage before they kick off, and hopefully, the pre-match work with the team takes this into account.
As for the team Sports Mole offer us
Raya;
Timber, Saliba, Gabriel, Lewis-Skelly;
Odegaard, Partey, Rice;
Martinelli, Havertz, Trossard
which given the injuries to Jesus, Saka, White, Tomiyasu, Nwaneri and possibly Nwaneri looks to be the only realistic selection. Calafiori has a late fitness test.
Sporting News however travels a totally different path and comes up with
Raya
Timber, Saliba, Gabriel, Lewis-Skelly
Odegaard, Jorginho, Merino
Sterling, Havertz, Martinelli
Personally I can’t see that at all but maybe the writer there knows things I don’t know.
The Standard doesn’t seem to offer a full line up but does say “This will be a tough test for Arsenal, particularly with Villa in good form,” and they predict a 1-1 draw.
And this is where I take issue with what many newspapers do – they put in statements like “Villa in good form” but give no explanation for it.
Inj fact in the last four league games Villa have lost one, drawn won and won two. That might seem like good form to a Villa fan, but those two wins have been against Leicester City who are 19th in the league and 21 points below Aston Villa, and against Everton who are 16th in the league and 18 points below Everton.
Apart from the fact that two wins can’t really be described as “in good form” the fact is that any team in the top half of the league should most certainly expect to beat Everton and Leicester City. And the big fact here is that in each case Aston Villa won by the single goal. Thus in my view the writer in question was either not really paying attention or was deliberately seeking to mislead,
In fact the last time Villa won a match by more than a single goal was ten games ago when they beat Brentford at home 3-1.
So that of course does not mean I am right and Arsenal will win, but rather it is frustrating when a writer makes such a prediction and then does nothing to justify it, except make a claim (such as “in good form”) and leave it at that, when it is clearly not true. Successive wins against Leicester City and Everton each by a single goal, is not “in good form”.
Either there has been no research at all, or there is a deliberate attempt to mislead.
As for how Arsenal deal with a biased referee, and this sort of misleading “information” we shall find out in the early evening.
