Arsenal v West Ham: What do the stats show that the referee likely to do?

 

By Bulldog Drummond

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The variation row at the foot of the table shows what percentage more the referee giving out the most fouls, penalties and yellow cards, hands out, than the referee who is least inclined to give fouls, penalties or yellow cards.

We can see part of the lunacy of PGMO methods at work, and the pro-ref bias of the media to focus on any of this, from the simple fact that Pawson has overseen four Aston Villa matches this season, but none for Arsenal.   On its own, this statistic may seem not particularly significant, but if Pawson were to be suspected of any bias for or against a team then Villa could already be benefitting or harmed by this bias.

So we have been calling for years for each referee only to see each club a maximum of twice in the season.   Sadly no one has taken up what still seems to me to be a very reasonable request.   And the fact that this is not being discussed in any way, does add to my suspicion that there is something out there that is being hidden from view, although of course, I make no allegation against Pawson in this regard.

Now we have a look at some of the referees in the PGMO this season.

Pawson does not show up on any of the extremes thankfully, and he sees just under half of his games as home wins, which is roughly around the League average.

But just look at the lunatic range in those columns.  One referee only seea 11.8% home wins while another sees 80% home wins.  One sees no away wins, another sees 56.3% away wins.   One sees 6.3% draws and another sees 64.7% draws.

If this is how life normally worked there would be no science of statistics, because we would see everything as random. .

 

Referee	Games	HomeWin%	AwayWin%	Draw%
3.Chris Kavanagh	17	11.8	23.5	64.7
5.Peter Bankes	16	62.5	31.3	6.3
6.Samuel Barrott	16	37.5	56.3	6.3
7.Craig Pawson	15	46.7	26.7	26.7
11.John Brooks	12	75.0	16.7	8.3
13.Darren England	12	25.0	58.3	16.7
14.Darren Bond	10	80.0	0.0	20.0

 

And I will make the point once again that I have made before, that I am not suggesting all the referees should be seeing the same percentages.  But rather that this range is crazy, especially as we discovered through academic research after the pandemic just how much some referees (but not all) are affected by the crowd.

What appears to be happening is that some referees now have ignored the research and carry on regardless and are still being affected by the crowd, (although undoubtedly believing that they are not), while others have taken that research on board and moved the other way – sometimes to excess – working in favour of the away team!

But we can do nothing except recognise the referee that we have and note (although no one takes any notice of this) that he is a home referee, and with a spot of luck this should work in our favour,

So there we are: a referee who favours home teams, waves lots of cards and is not that keen on penalties.  And my usual point: we should not be able to distinguish referees in this way – and we wouldn’t if they were being shared around the clubs equally (not seeing one club four times and another not at all until this weekend) and all being trained to overcome the influence of the crowd while doing their jobs.