- Chelsea v Arsenal in the league cup semis tomorrow
- When things are going wrong at the club, what should the owners do?
- Why are newspapers always so negative about football?
By Tony Attwood
We know refs are seeing the same clubs over and over, and that if you want to know a result in advance just see what results that ref oversees.
And we also know that the media won’t touch this, or if they do, they try to come up with crazy allegations of corruption which are so unlikely to be true they are not worth contemplating. They are stories created in order to persuade fans to laugh at any allegations of incompetence or corruption are nonsense.
Their latest approach, actively taken up by the Sun, (although it is possible that heir editors don’t know this is all a con trick) is to announce that “FOOTBALL fans have sensationally claimed the FA Cup fourth round draw was RIGGED after some favourable ties were handed to the Premier League big boys.” That is in the Sun, and of course the Sun’s editors and writers don’t believe a word of it. They publish the story because it fills up space and because it helps their agenda that football fans are nutcases living in strange fantasy lands.
In this case they argue that “Arsenal were handed a clash hosting League One Wigan, while Chelsea will pay a visit to Liam Rosenior‘s former club Hull and Manchester City will take on League Two opposition in one of Salford or Swindon in Round Four.”
Quite why such match fixing is arranged is not explained, and indeed we can think of reasons why under a fixed approach this would not happen – not least that these games will result in more income for the lower league clubs involved, than if they played each other.. But of course such reporting fills up space and gets readers, without the media having to do any research or pay anyone other than an office boy to write such tripe. The source of the story is not revealed.
Of course we can agree that Chelsea have had a rather easy run in the cup thus far .
| Date | Match | Result | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 23 Sep 2025 | Lincoln City v Chelsea | W | 1-2 |
| 29 Oct 2025 | Wolverhampton Wanderers v Chelsea | W | 3-4 |
| 16 Dec 2025 | Cardiff City v Chelsea | W | 1-3 |
Historically they have a fairly decent record in the league cup, having won it five times and been losing finalists five time. Arsenal as I am sure you will know have only won it twice but have been beaten finalists six times.
Indeed Chelsea are in the habit of doing finals of late – although not in that much of a habit of winning them as some recent data shows. In fact they have played in 10 finals in the 2020s. Two FA Cups, one Champions League, one Super Cuop, two Club World Cups, two Football League Cups, and I may have missed something but you get the idea. Arsenal as you know take things more modestly but have been developing the quality.
As for this game, the referee is Simon Hooper, a referee who it seems likes to be top or bottom in each chart. Mr Hooper has overseen 12 league games this season, and here we shall compare him with two other highly experienced referees: Anthony Taylor and Michael Oliver. In the first column we can see that Mr Hooper has overseen a dozen games while the referees we are comparing his with are ahead on that score, having seen 17 and 18 games each.
| Referee | Games | Fouls pg | Fouls/Tackles | Pen pg | Yel pg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A Taylor | 17 | 19.76 | 0.57 | 0.24 | 3.82 |
| Michael Oliver | 16 | 22.25 | 0.62 | 0.06 | 2.56 |
| Simon Hooper | 12 | 24.67 | 0.70 | 0.08 | 4.25 |
| Difference | 25% | 23% | 300%** | 66% |
Figures in the last row show the percentage of each attribute. Thus for example Hooper sees 25% more fouls per game that Taylor, 23% more fouls per tackle than Taylor and gives out 66% more yellow cards than Taylor.
BUT when it comes to penalties Hooper is way below his fellow professionals. Taylor has handed out 300% more penalties than Hooper this season! So one referee sees more fouls and more fouls per tackle, but the other gives out massively more penalties. It is totally bonkers and makes no sense at all.
To claim that this makes sense takes us into a world far more removed from reality than supporters claiming that the draw is fixed to allow big clubs to get through easily. In fact by reporting such a tale the Sun seems to be attempting to give credence to the notion that the draw is fixed, in order to stop people thinking there might be something seriously wrong with the refereeing.
