Forest v Arsenal: how the referee will affect the game

 

• Forest against Arsenal: the best of times v the worst of times
• How Arsenal benefit from realising this is a team game

By Tony Attwood

The Referee on saturday is Michael Oliver.  And if you have been here before for a match preview, you will know that our argument is simple: which referee the clubs get is a major factor in terms of how the game will turn out.   Which is why we say each referee should only see each club twice in a season: once at home, once away.   

In the table below, we compare M Oliver with three other prominent PGMO officials: Messrs Attwell, Hooper and Barrott.  The figures only include PL games this season. 

So first we look at the referee behaviour regarding fouls, tackles, penalties and yellow cards.  

Referee	PL Games	Fouls / game	Fouls / tackle	Penalty / game	Yellow / game
M Oliver	16	22.25	0.62	0.06	2.56
S Attwell	14	20.50	0.62	0.36	4.64
S Hooper	12	24.67	0.70	0.08	4.25
S Barrott	12	19.33	0.55	0.50	4.00
Difference top/bottom		27.62%	27.27%	733%	181%

 

So the figures show, get Barrott as referee and the chance of a penalty rises dramatically.  Get Oliver as the referee, and the number of cards handed out is cut in half. 

But that’s not all: let us turn to their results

 

Referee	Games	Home Win	Away Win	Draw
M Oliver	16	37.5%	43.8%	18.8%
S Attwell	14	42.9%	21.4%	35.7%
S Hooper	12	33.3%	41.7%	25.0%
S Barrott	12	41.7%	16.7%	41.7%
League total	210	45.4%	28.5%	26.1%

 

While I am not suggesting games are fixed, one might imagine directors of clubs approaching a “friend” in the PGMO, asking, “could we have Barrott more often?”   And when they get him, saying to their team, “If you are in the box and losing the ball, go down and appeal for a penalty.”

In the first row of the table below, we see the games played up to lunchtime on 16 January this season in the Premier League, and we’ve measured what percentage of them were home wins, away wins and draws.

The first point is that the number of home wins dominates as usual, except that during the pandemic, when no crowds were in the stadia, the percentage of home wins dropped dramatically. Analysis of what happened, published here and in some academic journals, reached the conclusion that in times of full stadia, the home crowd affects the referee’s decision-making, which is why, where there was no home crowd, the percentage of home wins collapsed.

The second point is that Simon Hooper’s numbers for home and away wins are not only out of line with the referees’ overall, away teams know that with him in place, they are also twice as likely to get an away win as would be the case with other leading referees.

And anyone betting on results is bound to do a lot better if they look at not only which team is playing but which referee is in charge.

 

Referee	Games	HomeWin	AwayWin	Draw
All referees	210	45.4%	28.5%	26.1%
Stuart Attwell	14	42.9%	21.4%	35.7%
S Hooper	12	33.3%	41.7%	25.0%
Sauel Barrott	12	41.7%	16.7%	41.7%
PL all games		95	60	55

 

All these figures are the averages found in the games of each referee compared with the total games so far this season.   So we can say that Samuel Barrott sees on average 19.33 fouls a game, while Simone Hooper sees on average 24.67 fouls a game.

Now that might not seem like much, but in fact, it means Oliver sees 28% more fouls in each and every game than Barrott.  And when Mr Hooper has the whistle, the instruction must be, “lay off the tackles – he’s just going to blow for a foul.”   As for having Mr Oliver in charge, the instruction might be “go for the tackles, the nudges, the pushes, the trips…” because, compared to other regular refs, he so rarely gives cards.

Can I prove that this is said?   Of course not, because the very nature of this problem is that the whole PGMO issue is secret.  But managers retain their jobs by winning, and part of winning is getting penalties, avoiding yellow cards, and avoiding giving away free kicks.  In short clubs analyse refereeing performances.

Indeed, if one is a really cynical manager and Mr Hooper is the ref, the instruction might be, “when you are tackled, go down” because he is so regular with seeing tackles as fouls.

On the other hand, you might argue that managers and players are much more honourable than this, and they would never dream of using a referee’s past performances as a guide to how the game should be played.   It’s possible.

But that is not my point.  My point is that by having such extreme variations in refereeing wherein one top referee gives out 733% more penalties than another top referee, is bound to result in someone somewhere saying “if you are tackled in the area go down.”

The point is of course, that this variation between the performances of referees is ludicrous and suggests either an appalling lack of training, or that the clubs discovered these differences long ago and are now exploiting them in each match.

But this is only part of the problem, because we haven’t even got to the fact that the referees have very varied result patterns.

Now, to be clear, I don’t expect one referee to have the same, but these figures show there is something seriously wrong here.