Refs give far more penalties against Arsenal than other clubs: but why?

 

 

• Fouls and cards: are Arsenal being hard done by?
• Penalties for and against Arsenal. The Mike Riley factor
• Penalties for and against. Are Arsenal being hard done by?

By Tony Attwood

As our recent articles have shown, Arsenal are getting fewer penalties awarded in their favour but more penalties against them than we would expect to happen by analysing the level of Arsenal attacking, and comparing with other top clubs.   

Indeed Arsenal are not just getting fewer penalties in their favour and having more against them than other top clubs, those other top clubs have the reverse – they get more penalties in their favour than against them.

If you want the statistical details and missed them, they are in the articles highlighted at the top of this piece.

So why are Arsenal getting statistics totally out of line with the other top clubs?

As with all such matters there needs to be an explanation of why this is happening.  For either Arsenal’s defensive players are behaving utterly stupidly and recklessly by giving away far more fouls than their top six rivals, or else referees are targeting Arsenal.  It is hard to see other explanations.

Now the notion that PGMO officials are targeting Arsenal is not one that we have particularly focused on in the past, although others have mentioned it often.  What Untold has focused on, is the way different referees approach matches (some seeing a large number of home wins, and some a large number of away wins). 

But the data is of course there – it just needed collecting and analysing, and it shows that Arsenal are getting many more penalties against them than other top clubs, but are getting fewer penalties in their favour than the other top clubs.

Of course this by itself does not mean the referees are biased.  But it does mean something is going on.  (If you missed the data articles see Penalties for and against  to catch up on the actual facts of the case.

So how can we explain Arsenal’s fewer penalties for and more penalties against, than other clubs?

One explanation could be that Arsenal put in a lot more tackles in defence than anyone else. And here we are helped by our constant interest in data and numbers – we have the information to hand.  

And in fact this season have put in the third lowest number of tackles of any team in the League.   So more tackles is not the explanation, and nor was it last season, for last season Arsenal were the fourth lowest in terms of tackles.  In the season before that only one team put in fewer tackles than Arsenal: Manchester City.   So no, the explanation is not that Arsenal are tacking more.

But what about fouls?   Maybe Arsenal don’t tackle any more than other club (in fact they tackle less than other clubs), but could it be that when Arsenal players do tackle they are actually really bad at it.  In which case they would be very high up the fouling table.

In 2022/23, Arsenal were 17th in the fouling table, meaning that 16 clubs fouled more than Arsenal.  Last season, Arsenal were 15th in the fouling table.  Now this season Arsenal yes Arsenal are doing worse, they are 8th in the table – so quite a leap up, but still, nothing that suggests that Arsenal are tackling and fouling in matches in a way that would explain the number of penalties Arsenal get against them.  More likely the number of fouls is up because of the number of injuries Arsenal have had has caused a greater change range of players through the season.  But even if this is the case, the rise in tackles does not explain the high number of fouls against Arsenal. 

No, the fact is that Arsenal are getting all these extra penalties against them, while actually being picked up for, at worst, a mid-range number of fouls.  Indeed, this season Arsenal are 14th in the yellow card table with just 75% of the cards that Chelsea has.   Last season Arsenal were 19th in the yellow card table – only ManC got fewer.  In 2022/23 Arsenal were 18th.

So this season is Arsenal’s worst in recent years for yellow cards but Arsenal are still below the mid-range, coming in at 14th.   And yet we are getting all these penalties against us – far more than other top clubs.  That doesn’t make sense.

What this means is that the more we look at it, the more confusing this gets; in every way the data makes the number of penalties conceded by Arsenal (when compared to other top clubs) seem very strange.  How can Arsenal be giving away so many penalties when they are not committing as many fouls as most other teams?

At the moment I am struggling to find any explanation we are not giving up on this, but there is more data to come.   But here is the key point so far.   

Arsenal get fewer penalties than other top teams but concede many more penalties than other top teams and so far we can’t explain why this is happening.  And if we can’t explain it in terms of Arsenal’s performance, the only explanation will be left is referee bias.

But before we get to that there will be more options and more stats to consider….  I’ll be back later.