Arsenal v Newcastle: our regular ref who waves yellow at Arsenal – and the implications

This will be Simon Hooper’s 24th game of the season in the Premier League.  He has also overseen three Championship and two League Cup games – so he is one of the top three referees working in the leagues this season.

Hooper has overseen Arsenal five times already this season – this will be game number six – he has not seen any club more often than Arsenal having seen six clubs four times (including Newcastle).  On the other hand, he has seen games involving Bournemouth and Manchester United once each, and there are four Premier League clubs he has not seen at all.  We may ask: why this imbalance?

The level of fouls given against Newcastle and Arsenal in each game by this referee is close – 10.75 on average committed by Newcastle and 10.60 by Arsenal.  But despite this, in these games Newcastle have received just six yellow cards and Arsenal 12!!!

So again we might ask, why are we deliberately being given this referee yet again???  Is it just so he can go on handing out double the number of cards to Arsenal for the same number of fouls?

Here are the awful details….

• On 23 November – a 3-0 home win for Arsenal over Nottingham Forest in which Arsenal were given three yellow and Forest two.
• On 21 December a 5-0 win for Arsenal over Palace in which each side got two yellows.
• 15 January – a 2-1 win over Tottenham in which Arsenal got three yellows to Tottenham’s one.
• A 2-0 defeat to Arsenal by Newcastle on 5 February in which Newcastle got two yellow cards and Arsenal three.
• On 12 Arpil a 1-1 draw with Brentford in which Arsenal got one yellow card and Brentford three – the only exception to the rule of penalise Arsenal more.

That makes 12 yellow cards for Arsenal; an average of 2.4 cards to Arsenal per game.  But this is the real horror: Arsenal’s average across the season in the league is 1.69 per game so as we can see he hands out cards to Arsenal 42% above the average rate.

Now as we know this season Arsenal have been hammered relentlessly by the media for being the dirtiest team in the league having received six red cards – the only team to do so.   And yet what is not mentioned, except here, is that only two teams got fewer yellow cards than Arsenal.    Manchester City got 56, Brentford 57 and Arsenal 61.  These numbers compare with Bournemouth on 94 and Chelsea on 97.

Now of course I would agree Arsenal being top of the red card league is a newsworthy item, but to report it properly one might also ask why Arsenal are so close to the foot of the yellow league, what those reds are for, and which referees were involved.   

Doing that review one immediate answer that springs to mind is that referees feel that Arsenal are a dirty team (because the media always tells them this is the case) and so they are more likely to wave the reds.   Otherwise, how do we explain this difference?   There might be an explanation but to ignore the issue totally, suggests the media simply want to knock Arsenal.

As for Simon Hooper, of the referees who have overseen over 20 games this season, he is the one who waves the yellow card the most dishing out 4.61 cards per game, compared with 2.83 per game for Anthony Taylor.     That there should be such a disparity between two of the four most used referees in the Premier League gives a huge advantage to the clubs that get Taylor a lot and a huge disadvantage to clubs that get Hooper a lot.  The craziness of this is only surpassed by the fact that the media always ignore it.

A draw for Arsenal would mean that Chelsea and Aston Villa could not overtake them this season (except by scoring previously unseen numbers of goals) but Manchester City could still overtake Arsenal.  But Arsenal would still have that game against Southampton to end the season with.

A win for Arsenal would mean that only Manchester City could overtake Arsenal, and then only by scoring something in the order of five goals in each of their remaining league games.

Here’s the table top if you want to do some checking.  Oh yes and I’ve also included Tottenham and Man U, just for the hell of it.

More shortly….