- The strange case of the West Ham games against Arsenal
- The Great Mistake which the others made but Arsenal avoided
By Tony Attwood
The officials for Arsenal’s game againsts West Ham United
- Referee: Christopher Kavanagh
- Assistant Referees: Dan Cook & Ian Hussin
- Fourth Official: James Bell
- VAR: Darren England
- Assistant VAR: Akil Howso
Chris Kavanagh, the referee for Arsenal’s game against West Ham at the taxpayer’s stadium, has overseen 27 games this season – only one referee has overseen more.
And only one referee among these ten, who oversee the most games in the Premier League, sees more tackles as fouls. However, most of the referees in this elite group who oversee the most games give out more yellow cards per game. Kavanagh averages 3.81 yellow cards per game. The ref most prone to wave all the yellows gives, on average, around one more yellow per game. Now that doesn’t sound much, but we must remember this is in each and every game. And that is what makes all the difference.
Now, one card here or there doesn’t sound much, but that means that the range of yellow cards per referee varies by something like 50 cards from one referee to the next during the course of the season. And since PGMO insists on some referees overseeing games involving the same team six or more times in a season, some clubs are going to be hit by constant yellow cards, while others are going to get away with fouls after foul aftr foul.
Still Attwell gives out anund 23% more yellow cards per game than Kavanagh so we should be grateful for small mercies.
As ever, if each team was only overseen twice at most by each referee then we could say it all evens out in the end, but of course, clubs like Arsenal can get the same referee over and over and over. And we know what that means.
In terms of results, Pawson is unusual – he sees just about the same number of home wins as he sees away wins, and as there are draws in his games. But a referee like Kavanagh is heavily drawn toward supporting the home side, and over 48% of his games this season have ended up as home wins. In fact, only one of the regularly used referees sees more home wins, and that is Peter Banks. One has to wonder what on earth he is seeing when we notice that OVER TWO THIRDS of his games end as home wins.
Kavanagh has around a quarter of his games as away wins or draws, and once again we have to ask, how can it possibly be that one referee, seeing over 20 Premier League games in a season, sees 68.2% of them as home wins, while another sees 40.7% as away wins and another sees 36.4% as draws?
All Arsenal need to know is that Kavanagh favours home wins around twice as much as he oversees away wins or draws in his matches. This really is crazy, but it is also PGMOL. If we take the figures of this referee through this season in the Premier League, we can see that Arsenal are effectively starting on the back foot. But I am sure Arteta and co study the referee issues as much as we do, so at least the players will be ready. The clubs that screw up are those that don’t have someone looking at referee statistics and who assume the referee will have no bias of the type revealed by their statistics.
In terms of results, under 30% of Kavanagh’s games come out as away wins. While for referees such as Gillett and Harrington, the percentage of away wins is 50% so Arsenal are clearly starting at a major disadvantage in this game and will have to beat the referee first and then the opposition.
While of course we don’t expect every referee to come out with one third of their games being home wins, one third away wins and one third draws, there really should be a smaller difference between refereeing results across a season than we actually see.
What started this enquiry was, of course, the dramatic change of results that we saw during the pandemic when the games were played without crowds and instead of seeing a dominance of home wins, we saw a dominance of away wins. The only clear explanation for this, after working through all the statistics, was that referees were, prior to the pandemic (and indeed since the pandemic) influenced by the crowds. It should not be, of course but that is how it is, which is what makes the support so important.
