- Liverpool v Arsenal: with Tierney in charge Arsenal are in trouble
- Time to sack Tierney, according to one part of the media
By Tony Attwood
This morning’s article is late – my apologies – but I have come across an issue the likes of which I have never seen before and I have been trying to sort this out.
Against Brentford we have already seen this season a very late, almost last-minute, change in a referee for an Arsenal game, removing one referee who was shown in our pre-match preview to favour away teams, with him being replaced by a referee who most certainly did not have this attribute..
So I have wondered, since we are the only publication, as far as I know, that does preview referees for each Arsenal game, could this be put down to our fault? It seems to me unlikely that we have that much influence over PGMO, who must know what the results profile of their referees is, and obviously choose to do nothing about what is going on.
So we get one referee sees 50% away wins, while another only oversees 5% away wins. The PGMO persistently ignore this outrage, and the media refuse to note the clear facts of the case; so why, suddenly for one match did the PGMO implement a last-minute change of ref after we highlighted the originally nominated man’s figures which appeared (because of a high percentage of away wins) seem to be in Arsenal’s favour?
We will of course, never know, but we are now on the lookout for a repeat performance by PGMO. And of course, we also ask, should we stop doing referee previews? So we’ve had the debate and decided no, we keep going, just to see if it happens again. I know it might harm Arsenal, but the club is surely aware of the bias of each referee before each match and is preparing the players for it.
So we carry on with our referee previews, and we note that the referee for today is Paul Tierney. And that is weird, since according to his figures, compared with his co-conspirators… sorry, colleagues… he is inexperienced.
| Referee | Games | Fouls pg | Fouls/ Tackles | Pen pg | Yel pg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Michael Oliver | 20 | 22.15 | 0.62 | 0.05 | 2.65 |
| Andy Madley | 13 | 22.15 | 0.72 | 0.31 | 3.46 |
| Michael Salisbury | 9 | 23.56 | 0.61 | 0.78 | 4.56 |
| Tim Robinson | 7 | 23.00 | 0.67 | 0.14 | 4.43 |
| Paul Tierney | 4 | 19.75 | 0.55 | 0.25 | 4.00 |
| Variance | 19% | 31% | 1500% | 182% |
Our chart shows that refereeing has now become even crazier. Suddenly, a match involving a top club (in fact, the top club) is overseen by a referee with limited exposure to the Premier League this season.. While it might be understandable that one referee sees 19% more fouls than another in each game he oversees, the fact that Madley sees 31% more tackles as fouls than Tierney is worrying. Arsenal are going to be kicked quite a lot without any retribution or punishment from the referee today.
But when we get to penalities it gets even weirder. For every penalty that Oliver sees, Salisbury sees 15! Yes 15! And Robinson sees getting on for two yellow card offences for each one that Oliver sees. This is the most laissez-faire referee in the league.
So with Tierney, the message must be, keep the number of tackles low and watch out with the tackling, as yellow cards can be waved much more than we are used to.
Now, as we have seen, Tierney has only overseen four games in the PL this season so his level of data that we have is poor, but we still have something. He has overseen three home wins and one away win. Even stranger, go back a couple of seasons, and Tierney was seeing 25+ Premier League games a camapaign.
So what can we make of all this?
Well in essence, Paul Tierney was judged to have made a mistake in Liverpool’s win at Nottingham Forest, and was punished by being dropped to video assistant referee (VAR) for Arsenal’s home game with Brentford. So what we have is a ref who makes a mistake which very nearly cost Liverpool their points, and is given the job of overseeing Arsenal games instead!!!!
Yes of course, all referees need experience, so all referees are going to make errors, but in 2023/24 Tierney was the second most used referee in the Premier League! Then he was dropped, and now he has been dropped again after a brief comeback. Really? Is the whole referee appointment thing just a matter of last minute decisisons and quick changes of mind?
It seems so. Slip PGMO a note saying “this guy is a bit pro-Arsenal” and out he goes. But the question remains, why do all these sorts of sudden changes happen at the very last minute? Is it so that Arsenal prepare for one referee and then find their planning is of no use since the ref is changed at the last? It is starting to look like PGMO fighting back.
