Why Arsenal don’t tackle more and why Tottenham are fouled so much

 

 

• • The real reasons why Arsenal have run into difficulty this season
  • How Arsenal’s Playing Style Challenges Legacy Analytics

By Tony Attwood

There is no solid evidence that Arsenal, or indeed any other club, actually believes that referees are against them.   And that is for two reasons.  One is that clubs are not allowed under Premier League / PGMOL rules to criticise the referee openly.  The other is that the media have adopted the view that even the fraction of a hint of a manager suggesting the referee influenced the result should be seen as excuse-making.  In short, their starting point is that all refereeing in the PL is not just very good, but the best in the world.

Meanwhile, club managers know perfectly well that, for example, while just a quarter of matches refereed by Anthony Taylor end up as home wins, two-thirds of matches overseen by John Brooks finish in favour of the home side.    Meanwhile. while half of Tim Robinson’s games end up as draws, under one in ten of Peter Bankes’ games end as draws.

This affects team selection and the use of substitutions; much depends on who is the referee.  It shouldn’t be like this of course, but the differences between referee performances are so great, that clubs are forced to respond.

Fortunately, Arsenal is one of the clubs that is very aware of how deeply which referee is in charge affects the game.   Although one could say Arsenal have not instilled the discipline of knowing the referee enough, since both Leandro Trossard and Declan Rice have been sent off for kicking the ball away at a free kick.   They should have remembered who the referee was. 

And of course, it is a fact that opposition players are now being tutored in each referee’s approach to game, before each match, in order to help them win and have the opponents suffer at the hands of the ref.

Many of the figures available are of course not reported, although they are there for those who look.  And here we might consider the number of penalties received by each club.   Liverpool had nine this season.  Arsenal have had two.  The previous season Arsenal were awarded ten – and given that Arsenal scored every single one of those penalties we can see just how important they can be.  But it is however, never mentioned.

Instead some “reporters” focus on Arsenal’s alleged indulgence in over-emotional responses to decisions, and make this a way of attacking Arsenal.  Meanwhile Arsenal have suffered by far the worst impact on their team selections because of injuries of any club in the league, but few mention that.

If you want to understand just how far the variance in the way clubs are treated, I would urge you to look up the number of fouls committed against Arsenal, as shown on the official Premier League site.   The details are here and if you go to that page you might well wonder why you bothered – for it is blank.   The data is not revealed.

The reason appears to be because that focus would reveal the vast variance in fouls that are noted by referees.   For example, Bournemouth, according to referees, commit almost twice as many fouls per match as Manchester City.  Aston Villa are fouled 50% more than Brentford.

Such figures however are utterly dependent not only on the actions of the players concerned but also the perception of referees.   Do Brentford really commit so few fouls, or is it that referees approach their games with a view that “Brentford don’t commit fouls” and so they get penalised far less often?

To try and work that out for some years we published the tackles per foul data – and indeed as far as I know it was just Untold that looked at this.    We haven’t done that this season, but in case you are wondering, take a look at this…. 

All figures are the average per game this season:

 

Club	Tackles	Fouls	Tackles per foul	Fouled
Manchester United	21.5	10.5	2.04	9.8
Arsenal	15.6	10.7	1.46	10.8
Tottenham Hots	17.8	11.7	1.52	13.1
Newcastle	15.9	10.4	1.53	12
Liverpool	17.1	11.5	1.49	9.4
Top to bottom diffeerence	38%	13%	40%	44%

 

What we find is that according to the referees…

• Manchester United commit 40% more tackles for each foul awarded against them than Arsenal.
• Tottenham commit 13% more fouls than Newcastle.
• Tottenham are fouled 39% more times than Liverpool.

The conclusion that we can draw from this is simple: Manchester United are really getting very special treatment from referees.  They tackle more, but get called up for fouls less than the other teams we look at here (except Newcastle, but only by a fraction of a foul per game),

Meanwhile, we can see that according to referees, Tottenham are fouled nearly half as much again as Liverpool. This means that Tottenham are getting more and more of the their attacks aided by the referees who see a tackle on a Tottenham player as a foul, and thus give Tottenham more and more free kicks.

Now of course a free kick is not a penalty, but even so it is a fairly positive advantage for the club getting the free kick.  And Tottenham get 34% more free kicks as a result of tackles by opposition players than Arsenal do!!!

This must be quite a factor in helping Tottenham score as many goals as they do, for despite the poverty of their position in the league, they are the fifth highest-scoring team in the league.

We have been pondering all season how they have managed it, and I think here is part of the answer.  In the view of referees, Tottenham players are being fouled more than those of other teams (21% more than Arsenal players for example, and 34% more than Liverpool players).   This must be giving them an enormous advantage in terms of free kicks, which them help them score goals.   Tottenham are still 17th in the League but just think where they would be if they were not getting all these free kicks!