Why Arsenal are going to have a really tough time of it this season

 

 

By Tony Attwood

• Arsenal v Newcastle today at 1230 – available on your computer
• The problem with counting the number of home grown players in Europe

Because the media never touch the issue, there is a general assumption that all Premier League clubs are treated pretty much the same way by the opposition against whom they play- and even if this is not the case, there is still that ominous phrase that “it all evens out in the end”.

In fact this is not true at all.   The most fouled team in the Premier League last season was fouled 47% more than the least fouled team.   And that is jusst according to the referees’ statistics! If we were to be able to factor in referee bias, the difference between teams in terms of the number of fouls they had against them, would be much greater.

Of course clubs know the referees that oversee their games, and they know how likely each referee is to call a foul or even a penalty for each perceived offence.   Which is why the referees’ figures really ought to have a lot more publicity than they get.   But since no one else will cover it, here are some of the basics.

Last season Aston Villa were fouled over 47% more times than Brentford. Arsenal were fouled 14% more than Liverpool.   And remember these are just the fouls that the referees blew for.

It’s one of those statistics which perhaps on its own might be ignored, but when we also note that Arsenal wee given more red cards than any other club, and indeed twice as many as Liverpool, and three times as many as Chelsea, and six times as many as Tottenham, we might start to think something odd is happening.

And here is another thing.  Yes Arsenal got six many more red cards than Chelsea (six times as many in fact) but Chelsea got 54% more yellow cards than Arsenal.  64 to Arsenal and 99 to Chelsea.  And Chelsea actually committed fewer tackles than Arsenal!

So let’s have a look at these yellow card situations.     Arsenal committed 10.3 fouls per game in 2023/24 and 10.6 fouls per game last season – so virtually the same.   And yes, the number of yellow cards per fouls was virtually identical – 43 all season for fouls in 23/24 and 42 for fouls in 2024/25.

But where Arsenal suffered was in terms of yellow cards for the mysterious “other” reason – this rose by a staggering 27%, particularly staggering because we spent a while last season asking what the “other” category included, fearing it was a grouping that simply allowed referees to give yellow cards to Arsenal.   We never did find out – but now we can see – it is indeed a way to give yellow cards to Arsenal.

Only Chelsea got more yellow cards for “other” reasons than Arsenal, and whatever it was they were doing to get these cards, they were doing one hell of a lot for they got 38 cards for other reasons.  This we might compare with Tottenham and Liverpool who got 11 cards each for “other reason”.   Put another way, in this special, undefined category that the media will never write about, Arsenal got shafted

Team Fouls Unprofessional Dive Other AFC 23/24 43 0 0 22 AFC 24/5 42 3 0 28

 

Now you will notice the “other” column to the right on the table above, and if you have been with Untold for a while you might recall that last season we made a bit of a fuss about “other”, asking for details of what others were.  No one was able to tell us.

But now we have a  new man in the front line who we are told dhas a preferred movement of drifting from the centre out to left wing.  So there could be an extra defender out there.  Which is great because Saka will be on the right..

In Portugal players trained all week looking for ways to stop their League’s top goal scorer, trying to stop Gyökeres getting space.  I fear that won’t be how it is in England.   He will quite simply be kicked, and the referees will do that  annoying two hands open palm gesture meaning, “get up and stop complaining.

Which means the key issue is, has anyone told him about the PGMO and their attitude toward Arsenal players?