- Arsenal have shown they have the defence and attack to win the league this season
- The draw for the next round and predicting the season from five games played
By Tony Attwood
OK, we know the Sun newspaper is often so far away from the real world of football that it is hard to believe they are on the same planet as the rest of us, but recently they have seemingly now even ventured beyond even the tiny world of Pluto and its baby moon. For they are telling us that
SEVERAL supporters have whinged that the Carabao Cup draw was “rigged”.
And yes, they have put the word “Several” in block capitals. Although I can understand that a bit since I recently had a chat with a couple of guys who strongly suggested that all football matches were rigged. Their evidence was that it was “bleedin’ obvious”.
But apparently, it was not just the matches that were rigged, it was also the issues of which teams got “easy” draws in the cup competitions. The newspaper said, “Arsenal fan groaned: “City getting Swansea. RIGGED.”
Now you will know that online publishers use the blue link to help readers follow a story further, which can be very helpful. But in that case, the Arsenal link just goes to their general Arsenal page rather than anything on a fixture-rigging story.
In short, this is mere assertion with no evidence, a bit like saying “the Prime Minister is a Martian – it’s obvious,” and then having a link to a website about the solar system.
Now one reason why the Sun might do this is that its readers like to be reassured that their football team losing matches has nothing to do with the quality of the team and its players, but because of nefarious ne’er-do-wells who have taken over our national sport.
But it also makes for easy reading and even easier reporting. In fact, no reporting at all. Just get someone to say something silly, report it, and there you are. Indeed, since the people who actually made the allegations are not identified, we don’t even know if these are real allegations.
Now on the other side of the coin, we do, of course, raise regular worries about referees, but here we are not so much saying the matches are rigged but rather that referees are not operating to the same standards. The evidence is the huge variation in the number of fouls one referee sees compared to another, and the way some referees oversee far more away wins than others. This might be biased, but it could also be the way each referee sees the game, and that suggests that they need a lot more training – an interesting issue in itself.
But as long as the bias remains, the best way around it would be to have more referees so that no club sees each referee more than once at home and once away. Now the fact that PGMO is an ultra-secretive operation without even having a website, and which never explains itself or even joins in the debate about the strange variations in statistics between referees, suggests something odd is going on. Yet this is the story the media never touch.
Yet the variation in referee performances in the Premier League is real, the statistics can be shown, but it is never reported in the media. Yet allegations about the draw for the FA Cup and other matters like that come with no evidence at all. It is just chatter.
So the chatter gets reported all the time in some newspapers, while the serious issue about variation in refereeing performances (which have some real-life statistics to back up the debate) don’t get mentioned at all
It is that disparity that gives me concerns about what is going on. Maybe the two issues (quoting allegations without evidence, while refusing to quote issues where there is evidence) are not related – but we do get some very weird and biased reporting across virtually all the media. Here’s one example for this weekend…
The Sun runs the headline “ARSENAL will be hoping summer signings Eberechi Eze and Viktor Gyokeres can help them break their Newcastle curse.”
But what Newcastle curse? True, the last seven games between the two have not been one of Arsenal’s best runs against a club – three Arsenal wins, three Newcastle wins, and a draw – but that surely is not a “curse”.
One could say that the last two games on Tyneside being 1-0 Newcastle wins was a curse – but really two 1-0 defeats for Arsenal, “a curse” Again, surely that is pushing it.
The fact is that Arsenal beat Newcastle away 0-2 in 2023, and lost the game in the last two seasons 1-0, and they are calling that “a curse”.
What we might do in return is consider the previous six league games between the two clubs between 2018 and 2021 (obviously, three at home, three away). Arsenal won all six scoring 14 goals and conceding one. Is that a curse? No, probably not, but it sure was fun.
