- Aston Villa v Arsenal, the referee, and the collusion of journalists
- Aston Villa v Arsenal: there’s something very odd about this fixture list
By Tony Attwood
Here’s a bit of logic. If every referee worked to the same set of rules, and was given matches spread across all the clubs in a division, we would expect the percentage of home wins, away wins and draws would be roughly similar. Not identical of course, but within a general trend.
And as we pondered this, we might remember the impact of the home crowd, which became so clear during the pandemic, when the home crowd was no longer there. Then away wins shot up, indicating very clearly just how much referees can be influenced by the home crowd.
In the last article, we looked at the fouls per game and fouls per tackle. Now we take a look at the extraordinary differences between referees in terms of home wins, away wins and draws. Figures relate to this season only and our referee tomorrow is the notorious Peter Bankes, which does not make for happy reading.
However, despite his very disturbing statistics, Peter Bankes is the third most active referee in terms of giving fouls for tackles, so Arsenal need to work at the interceptions, not the tackles, and when tackled by a Villa player, give the ref what he wants and quite simply go down. That may seem utterly cynical, but given the way PGMOL insist on running things, having different referees follow their own set of rule interpretations, rather than trying to have some sort of standard approach within the League, that is the main thing Arsenal can do when faced with such a home-biased referee
| Referee | Games | Home win | Away win | Draw |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Peter Bankes | 10 | 70.0% | 20.0% | 10.0% |
| Chris Kavanagh | 11 | 63.6% | 18.2% | 18.2% |
| Robert Jones | 8 | 62.5% | 25.0% | 12.5% |
| Darren England | 9 | 55.6% | 22.2% | 22.2% |
| Anthony Taylor | 11 | 54.5% | 27.3% | 18.2% |
| Stuart Attwell | 10 | 50.0% | 20.0% | 30.0% |
| Samuel Barrott | 8 | 50.0% | 0.0% | 50.0% |
| Michael Oliver | 11 | 45.5% | 45.5% | 9.1% |
| Craig Pawson | 9 | 33.3% | 44.4% | 22.2% |
As we can see, referees vary in the way they favour or don’t favour the home or away team. And from the evidence of the lockdown period, when crowds were either very small or non-existent, we can see that without a crowd, away wins rise and home wins decline – thus showing quite clearly how home crowds influence the referees.
And tomorrow’s referee is right at the top of the list for being a “home referee” as we can see. In short, Arsenal are going to have to overcome the crowd, the opposition team, and the referee.
So Arsenal’s key tactic has to be the quieten down the home crowd, which means an early goal would be very helpful.
In the games between the two clubs, Arsenal are slightly ahead, having won 88 (43%) to Villa’s 71 (35%), with 46 being draws.
Across the last eight games between the two sides, all of which have been in the Premier League, five have been Arsenal victories, two have been Villa wins, and one (the last one) has been a draw. Indeed, if we just look at the last four games, the results look rather gloomy with one Arsenal win, two Villa wins and a draw in the last game (2-2 at Arsenal in January.)
However, the games between the two have been real swings and roundabouts affairs, with a run of 19 games between May 1999 and March 2008 in which Villa did not win a single match. Every one of these games was a league match, and Arsenal won 12, and the rest were drawn.
So the recent run of six consecutive wins for Villa (including two in the Europa) is something of a turnaround. especially when one remembers that in the first five games of the season, three were defeats and two were goalless draws.
But when we look at the overall league table, there is one very noticeable difference between the two sides, and that is that Arsenal have a goal difference of +20 and Villa’s is just +6. In fact, their underachievement when compared with Arsenal is not specifically to do with goals scored or goals conceded, but a combination. They have scored seven fewer and conceded seven more.
But we have to recognise that what Villa have done is improved all round. Last season they got an average of 1.73 points per game; this season it is 2.00.
Indeed, Villa have shown a general improvement in their Premier League performances over recent years. For the three years from 2019/20 to 2021/22 they came 17th, 11th and 14th. Then in the last three seasons it was 7th, 4th and 6th. The one slippage they have had is that although Ollie Watkins got up to 27 goals in 2023/24 he slipped back to 17 last season.
But Villa have just two players who have scored more than three goals in the league this season: Buendia with four and Malen with seven. For Arsenal, the goal scorers with four plus this season are Saka with seven, Gyökeres with six , Eze with five, Martinelli with five, Merino with five and Trossard with five, and it is that variety and that ability to cover for players when someone is injured, which certainly does help, and might well help tomorrow night.
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