Just published today in the “100 Seasons in the Top Division” series
And recently on Untold Arsenal
By Tony Attwood
The referee for our match this weekend is Chris Kavanagh. This season he has refereed seven games in the Premier League, of which 57.1% have been home wins and 14.3% away wins: an extraordinary bias even by the normal standards of home/away bias. For example, last season 132 matches in the league were away wins out of 380, just under 35%. Yet for this ref is it 14%!!!
But of course, we’ve not had many games this season, so we must go back. In 2024/2025, this referee oversaw 25 PL games, of which 32% were home wins 24% away wins and 44% draws. So let’s compare those figures with his earlier seasons…
In 2023/24 it was 40% home wins, 40% away wins and 20% draws.
In 2022/23 it was 30.8% home wins, 53.8% away wins and 15.4% draws
So, tracing the percentage of away wins year on year from 2022/23 to this season (obviously incomplete) the figures (and I stress, just for this referee) are
- 2022/23: 53.8% away wins out of 13 games
- 2023/24: 40% away wins out of 20 games
- 2024/25: 24% away wins out of 25 games
- 2025/26: 14.3% away wins out of seven games (season still in progress)
Of course, I have had to work these numbers out myself, because PGMO don’t supply such data on their website because… well, they don’t have a website. So any errors are mine.
But even so, these figures are extraordinary. And let us not be fooled into thinking that this referee is some new kid on the block learning his way around the league. You don’t get to be a Premier League ref without having done a lot of previous refereeing.
But this is where we have great difficulties with understanding what is going on with PGMO. We have argued for years that in order to overcome any tiny hint of referee bias, each referee should only see each team twice in a season, once at home and once away. This is not to suggest there currently is corruption or bias, but this “once at home and once away” rule would be a simple measure that could be introduced to overcome most suspicions that somewhere there might be referee bias creeping into the game. But there has been no move on this. Somehow, it is still felt ok for teams to see the same referee five or six times a season!
Of course, it might be argued that the decline in away wins seen by this referee is good, because his figure at the start of the chart above was way above the average. Maybe he was biased in favour of away teams in 2022/23. But then he shouldn’t have been refereeing if there had ever been hints of bias.
Now I stress, I make no allegation of any of this. I am merely reporting the figures that we have been able to gather. And as I have noted year after year, PGMO have no website, and so we can’t read their explanation for such oddities.
But there is another point here: the spread of results during the pandemic when crowds were not allowed into grounds, or only allowed in modest numbers. During that time, results changed dramatically, and the number of away wins shot up. That surely suggests that something odd is going on in refereeing – but no results of any investigation in this were ever produced (if there even was an investigation beyond those published on this site)..
The figures do suggest (and I say it no more strongly than that – they “suggest”) that this referee did initially have a tendency to be “kinder” to away teams, and he has been “encouraged” to change that approach – which he has done year by year.
And to be quite clear, I am not saying that has to be the conclusion – merely that it a suggestion that can arise from the figures. I would love to have a discussion with PGMO on other explanations, but as I say, they have no website.
So, surely what most certainly should happen is that PGMO should be investigating what is quite a remarkably unusual set of statistics.
This season there have been 90 games played in the Premier League. 26 of these have been away wins – 29%. But just look at the figures from this referee…
- 2022/23: 53.8% away wins out of 13 games
- 2023/24: 40% away wins out of 20 games
- 2024/25: 24% away wins out of 25 games
- 2025/26: 14.3% away wins out of seven games (season still in progress)
Now, when it comes to Arsenal, we should note that this season Arsenal have won 75% of their away games. Last season, Arsenal won 50% of their away games. In 2023/24 it was 68% that Arsenal won away from home. In 2022/23 it was 63%. In 2021/22 it was 47% away win. In 202/21 it was 53%.
So the chances of an Arsenal away win based on Arsenal’s performance this season and taking into account the previous seasons, should be very high. But this referee is, year on year, seeing fewer and fewer away wins in his matches.
We really should not be having a debate like this – referees should be seeing the same range of games each and so coming up with roughly the same percentages of home wins, away wins and draws. But that seems not to be the case..
