Fulham v Arsenal, the referee’s form and his favoured results

 

 

 

• Fulham v Arsenal: what has happened in the past
• Fulham v Arsenal: at last we can have a league match again

By Tony Attwood

So far, just six five referees have refereed six Premier League games this season, and one of these is our referee for this weekend’s game: Anthony Taylor.   He has awarded 115 fouls, the fewest of the five referees with six games overseen already, and has only shown 18 cards. For as Squwaka reminds us, “Taylor once showed 14 yellow cards in a single game last season!”

And yet a year ago, as the Guardian pointed out,  “Athony Taylor pulled from refereeing duty after social media abuse.”

That came after Chelsea’s 1-0 win at Bournemouth”    In that case, he did two stints as fourth official over one weekend.   But as we knhow, the Chelsea crowd does include some rather hearty roughs.

But despite these blips, this is the go-to referee for big matches, which means Arsenal do see him on multiple occasions.  Likeise Taylor has been seen officiating the Manchester derby and Chelsea’s game against Liverpool before the international away days.

Anthony Taylor’s Arsenal record is that he has seen the club 24 times at Arsenal’s ground, with them winning 14 (58%).  Now, last season Arsenal overall won 74% of their home matches, and so were significantly under-rewarded by Taylor.   Likewise away from home, Arsenal won nine out of 26 games he has overseen (35%) whereas last season overall Arsenal won 58% of their games.

So quite clearly Arsenal underachieved both home and away with this referee in charge, although this is possibly to some degree because he was deliberately given the harder matches for Arsenal.  But this cannot be said of the game this weekend, so we shall watch the referee’s behaviour with considerable interest.   However, we must acknowledge that overall Arsenal have won exactly half of the games that this referee has seen.

Taylor seems to be the go-to referee for Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelsea, and one referee seeing the same clubs over and over must cause some pause for thought.  There is no need for this – or at least there would not be if PGMO employed enough referees.   Keeping the number of refs low does not suit anyone or help overcome allegations of bias.

But there is a better spot of news amidst the figures, as Arsenal have not lost any of their last eight games under Taylor – although of course, given the poverty of the opposition’s recent performances, Arsenal will be looking for more than a draw this weekend.

Indeed, most recently, with Taylor in a game, Mikel Merino was sent off for two yellow cards in a 2-2 draw with Liverpool last May.

And it is Taylor’s love of the cards that can cause a problem for Arsenal in that Taylor has waved no less than seven red cards – and there have been more Tayulor-reds for Arsenal than for any other club during his career.  Perhaps he just sees red shirts and reaches for red cards.

But as ever, the biggest problem for Arsenal is that Taylor is not consistent – although it could now be that, since someone pointed out to him that we are following his every move with interest and noting his love of sending off Arsenal players, he might just think twice about waving the red.  If he does do it again, unless the breach of the rules is absolute and clear, very serious questions will be asked.

For we can see from the current figures that this season is seeing fractionally over half of all tackles as fouls, while referees like Bankes and England see half the number of tackles as fouls.  It is this sort of variation that discredits PGMO and its employees.

But despite that, overall Taylor is not card happy, averaging three a game, while Hooper is averaging over five a game.  This compares with Oliver who has been handing out just fractionally over two yellows a game.  And to be clear, all these referees have seen six PL games this season.   What we are always asking for is consistency.

Of the referees who have refereed 20 or more PL games in the last season, Taylor does, however, offer some hope for Arsenal for with him just over a quarter were home wins and just over half were away wins.   In fact, no other regularly used referee has seen as many away wins.  Kavanagh has seen under a quarter of his games as away wins, and Bankes has seen over half as some wins.  Only referee Robert Jones oversaw fewer home wins last season, with under one-fifth on this category, with two-fifths being away wins.

That’s all for Friday – more on the match Saturday morning..