By Tony Attwood
The Carabao Cup is a now you see it now you don’t compeittion, at least when it comes to VAR – and tonight it seems it is now you don’t. No VAR tonight, and that for reasons that will not become clear this point.
So time instead to look at the referee, who is Sam Barrott. This will be the fifth time we have been object of his attention over the last few years.
This season he has overseen five games and so we can put him in a table of those referees that have undertaken five or more Premier League games thus far. In the table below we have selected five referees, including tonight’s man in charge just to see how they compare. The figures relate entirely to games this season…
| Referee | Games | Fouls pg | Pen pg | Yel pg |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Peter Bankes | 7 | 25.57 | 0.43 | 4.14 |
| Stuart Attwell | 6 | 21.83 | 0.33 | 5.17 |
| Craig Pawson | 6 | 23.00 | 0.33 | 2.00 |
| Samuel Barrott | 5 | 23.60 | 0.40 | 5.20 |
| Thomas Bramall | 5 | 21.80 | 0.00 | 3.00 |
So if we look at fouls per game, we can see a range from 21.8 fouls to 25.57 fouls per game across the various referees – and here we do need the reminder thaat all the figures are all averages for each referee. So with fouls, we can say that in an average match Referee Bankes sees 17% more fouls than Thomas Brammall. That is quite a large number in terms of an average variation.
As for penalties, well Thomas Brammall has given none this season, so we can’t really make a percentage comparison, but if we take Stuart Attwell, we can see that Peter Banks sees 30% more penalties than Attwell. That seems an extraordinarily high variance between one ref and another!
Moving on to yellow cards we find that Bankes is seeing more than twice as many penalties as Pawson, but that is nothing when compared to Barrott and Attwell, who each award more than double the number of yellows
So this referee is a penalty giver and a yellow card waver – and his tendency to do these thins doesn’t have much to do with the game. He just does these things a lot. The instructions to Arsenal must be to take care and let the opposition get the brunt of this referee’s anger – or at least of his card-waving habit.
Now this is especially interesting when we look at the yellow card for the point here is that when we look at the yellow card table Brighton are top with 24 this season. Data from WhoScored.
| Team | Yellow cards | Possession% |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Brighton | 24 | 48.0% |
| 2. Bournemouth | 23 | 50.7% |
| 3. Everton | 22 | 44.8% |
| 4. Chelsea | 18* | 59.9% |
| 19. Arsenal | 9 | 58.8% |
| 20. Newcastle | 9 | 50.1% |
*Chelsea already have three red cards, and we are waiting to see if the media make as much fuss about them as they did about Arslenal and reds last season. The suspicion is that they won’t because, well, this is Chelsea, and basically they get a good press.
So moving on one more time, what about the Arsenal team? The first name in the Standard’s choice below might just be a little bit of a surprise for you (which is my way of saying it took me by surprise), but in fact this is Kepa who played 31 games for Bournemouth last season on loan from Chelsea for whom he played 109 games between 2018 and 2015. He also played 14 times for Real Mardid.
The Standard predicts the Arsenal team as
Arrizabalaga;
White, Mosquera, Hincapie, Lewis-Skelly;
Nwaneri, Norgaard, Eze;
Saka, Merino, Trossard
Sports Mole go with
Kepa;
White, Mosquera, Hincapie, Lewis-Skelly;
Eze, Norgaard, Merino;
Nwaneri, Gyokeres, Trossard
We shall, as ever, see, especially since the game is live on TV, just as last night’s game was, although probably with a spot more chit chat at half time.
I am of course going for an Arsenal win. 2-0 I think.
