Arsenal v Palace: could this referee be looking for a draw?

 

• It’s Wilshire vs Ramsey on Saturday at 12.30, and a review of Arsenal’s transfer spend
• Visit Tottenham. It’s safer than Rwanda (which backs the war in DR Congo)

by Tony Attwood

 With Arsenal having played 16 games at home and Palace 16 away, the comparison between the two clubs is easy, and stark….

 

 

Arsenal’s one home defeat was actually the last defeat for the club this season, on 22 February 2025.   Since then Arsenal have played 11, won six, drawn five, lost none.

Crystal Palace have also won six of their last 11, and have lost three and drawn two   But they have let themselves down a bit in the last six games.  So  here is the complete last six games table as supplied by The Fishy.    You might like to notice who is top in the last six; Wolverhampton are currently 15th in the full league table, and were being touted as primed for relegation until a few weeks back.

 

Premier League Form (Last 6)

Pos	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Wolverhampton W	6	5	1	0	11	5	+6	16
2	Newcastle U	6	5	0	1	16	6	+10	15
3	Aston Villa	6	5	0	1	14	4	+10	15
4	Liverpool	6	5	0	1	11	5	+6	15
5	Manchester C	6	4	2	0	13	5	+8	14
6	Arsenal	6	3	3	0	10	4	+6	12
7	Nottingham F	6	4	0	2	9	6	+3	12
8	Chelsea	6	3	2	1	6	4	+2	11
9	Brentford	6	2	2	2	8	7	+1	8
10	Crystal Palace	6	2	2	2	6	12	-6	8

 

It all starts to point towards a match that should not be too hard for Arsenal to win, even with Arsenal’s thoughts now firmly focused on the next round of the Champions League.

The clubs have played each other 57 times, with Arsenal winning 61% of the games and Palace winning 11%.   And in fact, Palace have only won one of the last dozen games between the two sides, that being near the end of the 2021/22 season when Palace won their home game against Arsenal 3-0.

In the six games since then Arsenal have scored 20 goals, and Palace four, which augers well for this game tonight.

What’s more, if we look at Palace’s last five games only one has been a victory for the club, that being a 2-1 win over Brighton.    And we might also throw in that Arsenal have only lost one league match in the last 23 that they have played.  That’s another factor that can help us along the way.

The only thing that could stop Arsenal it seems, is the referee, who for this match is Michael Sallisbury

Salisbury has overseen 11 Premier League games this season and has an average rate of foul giving of 23.36, compared with Robert Jones who in 20 games has given 25.1 fouls.   So Salisbury is not the most whistle-happy referee, but he still does like to blow and be the centre of attention.

Yet on 2.91 yellow cards per game he is very lenient given that referees like John Brooks handing out 5.33 cards a game on average.   This of course could play into Crystal Palace’s hands as they will know they can get away with a lot of fouls without getting a card.

However, the biggest problem for Arsenal with this referee is that he prefers away wins to home wins.   45.5% of his matches have been home wins but 54.5% of his games have been away wins, and not one has been a draw.   Our worry must be that recognising these figures PGMOL might well have warned him about his future behaviour just as they warn players, and told him to sort his averages out and start seeing games end as draws.

Of course, I have no evidence of that, but having this referee never overseeing a single draw in the league while Chris Kavanagh has overseen 22 games this season and amazingly half of all those have ended up as draws, does show us that which referee a club gets can have a major impact on its results.  As it happens Arsenal and Crystal Palace are both in the top four, for draws this season, so there could well be a temptation for this referee to start to even up his averages and see the game out as a draw.

This is a particular worry since four of Arsenal’s last seven games have been draws while two of the last five Palace games have been draws.  A bias towards a draw by the referee could look like a normal performance by the two clubs.

What perhaps gives us a more positive outlook is that Palace’s last three games this sesason have included two away games against teams in the upper part of the league, and we find that they have lost 5-2 away to Manchester City on 2 April, and then lost 5-0 away to Newcastle.   The last match they played was a home game against Bournemouth on 19 April which was a goalless draw.

More soon….