Ipswich v Arsenal: with the referee it is going to be very tough for Arsenal

 

 

By Tony Attwood

• The simple statistical proof that one referee is not the slightest bit like the next
• The one thing Arsenal have not yet managed to find.

So today it is the round of 32 in the League Cup.  Not the most important date in the year for Arsenal FC but still, it is a match, and matches are there to be won.   At least we would like that to be the case.

But just in case you wondered whose fault it might be that we have a crisis in refereeing, thinking perhaps that the PGMO might be to blame for allowing some referees to oversee matches involving the same club five or six times in a season, well, no it is not their fault.   It is obviously Arsenal’s fault because Mikel Arteta happens to give press conferences which he is obliged to do under the contract the media has forced upon managers.

Thus the headline today in the Guardian, “Refereeing is now an impossible job owing to the culture of micro-analysis the Arsenal manager has helped to create.”   Yep it is Arsenal’s fault – and in the statistics below I will show you exactly why.

Ipswich v Arsenal is at 8pm tonight.  Peter Bankes is set to referee the match, assisted by Constantine Hatzidakis and Alex James, with Josh Smith as the fourth official.    Peter Bankes refereed Arsenal during the Chelsea semi-final second leg and the Manchester City final last season.   There are no VARs involved.

Because of the constant, and it must be admitted successful, propaganda waged by other clubs to the effect that Arsenal is a dirty team Peter Bankes may be thought to have been chosen because of his propensity for seeing fouls that others don’t – his average of 22.45 fouls a game is right near the top of the fouls per game league.  He is also fairly nifty with the yellow card (3.82 per game) and most particularly likes to wave the red – he was the second highest red card giver last season in the entire Premier League.

But the problem with this referee is that he doesn’t like away wins.  And indeed if you wanted one simple table to offer to anyone who tries to tell you that refereeing in England is perfectly ok, this is the one to look at.     The games are from last season obviously, since we have not had enough this campaign to generate the table.

 

Referee	Games	HomeWin%	AwayWin%	Draw%
Peter Bankes	22	68.2%	18.2%	13.6%
Jarred Gillett	22	22.7%	45.5%	31.8%

 

So last season after 22 games Peter Bankes managed to oversee just four away wins, compared with 10 witnessed by referee Gilett in the same number of games.   And yes we have Bankes selected as our referee for this league cup match.

Two questions arise.  One is why this referee has been chose, and the second, why he has not been sent for re-training long ago so that he can overcome what from the outside appears to be his love of the home crowd.

Could it be argued that this massive difference in the results these referees see over the same number of games, is just down to chance?  Bankes somehow only being given games that away teams are very unlikely to win?   Or is it that somehow within this, in a way that we don’t understand and can’t explain, Bankes almost always gets to referee matches where the home team is better?

There are of course those questions, but there is a bigger question too.   And that question is, why does the media never ever seem to mention this?  Why does the media never investigate these truly weird figures that crop up showing just how different referees are.   Showing for example, that some refs love to see home wins, while others tend to see a more balanced spread of wins and others like away wins?

And come to that why are even those questions never asked?   Why do the media not consider what is going on with referee?   Why does the media which is so keen on football that it buys the rights to matches on TV and radio each season, never once say, “Actually it is a bit strange how some referees see lots of away wins and other don’t.  Why do you think that is Barry?”   (And come to that why isn’t there a Barry when you need one?)

Arsenal might just win this game, but with this referee’s record it looks from the outside rather more difficult that it might have been.  Unless of course one were to say that past results mean nothing.