By Tony Attwood
- Arsenal v Manchester City: how the two clubs have been doing of late
- Just because football journalists are ignorant that doesn’t mean Arsenal
The referee for this game is Peter Bankes.
This referee is at or very near the top of the refereeing charts for seeing fouls, handing out penalties and waving yellow cards.
Now I must be clear and say that he is not at the very top of the charts for each activity, and thus he has not reached the extreme state of (for example) Stuart Attwell when it comes to seeing penalties. But this season he has awarded five times as many penalties as Michasel Oliver. And one might ask – does it seem likely that one referee sees all the teams that commit fouls in the area, and another doesn’t???
In fact, on average, Peter Bankes sees 22.45 fouls a game. Only Chris Kavanagh among the regularly used referees sees more at 22.64 fouls a game, which is under one per cent difference. So fouls, and anything that might actually, perhaps, or maybe look as if it might be a foul, is blown for.
And as for when it comes to tackles, then he is right at the top of the tree, for with this referee, two-thirds of all the tackles on the pitch are blown for as fouls.
Likewise, he is not the biggest awarder of penalties in the PGMO ranks, but he still hands out five times as many penalties as Michael Oliver!!! Both men have overseen 22 games this season and Banks awards a penalty once in every four games while, while Michael Oliver has only given a penalty once in every 20 games!!!
Does this show a balanced and consistent approach to refereeing in the Premier League? Obviously, PGMO think so. I certainly don’t share that view.
But this is the world we live in. One of our top referees sees a penalty once in every four games, while another awards a penalty once in every 20 games. Does it seem the slightest bit likely that one referee sees five times as many penalties as another when both are refereeing in the same league in the same season?
Thus, our referee on Sunday is a penalty giver and a man who sees fouls where others don’t. He is not at the very top of the list of yellow card wavers, but he nonetheless is active in the card waving, at 3.82 cards a game. Mind you, the PGMO seem to love the fact that referees go their own way in relation to card wave. Stuart Attwell waves 4.6 cards per Premier League match, while Craig Pawson waves 2.47 per match. Yet another reason why no referee should ever see the same club more than twice in a season.
But as things stand, one referee waves nearly twice as many cards per Premier League match during the course of a season as others, thus giving clubs that have Pawson in charge of their games a huge advantage as their players take much longer to reach the five yellows and a ban.
Or put another way, if you want to fix a match, just make sure you get the right referee! You don’t make any suggestion to the ref – just ask him to play his regular game.
However, from the data for this forthcoming match, and data we have seen through the season, I do think the PGMO are now aware that we have tumbled what’s going on, and at least for the high-profile games, they are starting to weed out their more eccentric members.
And now, we look just at the referee for tomorrow’s game…
As you will know if you regularly follow our reviews of referees, our campaign is for each referee to see each club a maximum of twice per season. But here with the appearance figures of Peter Bankes, we can see that he has already refereed each of Manchester City and Arsenal three times – this will be the fourth appearance, and quite possibly PGMO might have one or two more occasions for him prepared for future weeks.
This is not to say that Bankes is corrupt – we obviously have no evidence on such a matter and so of course presume he is not and make no allegations, but we can trace his actions with various clubs, including Newcastle, who, quite insanely, have already seen five times this season!!!!! Worse for them, he is seeing over 30% more fouls per game with Newcastle than with any other team, BUT he is giving out fewer yellows per game with them!
To untangle that, we’d need a video which follows the ref through each game, and a panel of experts – neither of which we have. The best we have is our summary table of this referee’s appearances this season and what he has done…
| Team | Games | Fouls pg | Yel pg |
|---|---|---|---|
| Newcastle United | 5 | 13.40 | 1.40 |
| Chelsea | 4 | 10.00 | 3.50 |
| Leeds United | 4 | 10.00 | 0.75 |
| Arsenal | 3 | 11.00 | 1.00 |
| Tottenham Hots | 3 | 12.67 | 2.00 |
| Manchester City | 3 | 10.67 | 2.67 |
So to come back to Arsenal and the ManC, this ref calls out fractionally more fouls for Arsenal per game, but waves the yellow card at Manchester C players two and a half times as often per match as he does Arsenal players. Yet Arsenal commits fractionally more fouls than ManC under this referee’s eyes!!!
We can’t explain such a discrepency but it works in Arsenal’s favour, so that is good. But of course, the difference is small. Arsenal are perceived to make one more foul than ManC every three games or so, and then ManC are shown two and a half times as many yellows as Arsenal.
| Team | Games | Fouls pg | Yel pg |
|---|---|---|---|
| Arsenal | 3 | 11.00 | 1.00 |
| Manchester City | 3 | 10.67 | 2.67 |
The only possible explanation is that when a ManC player commits a really nasty foul, he really doesn’t pull back. It’s a stonker of a rotten foul, and so is more likely to get a yellow. We’ll have to look out for those in the league cup final – and see how many yellows the Mancs get.
