RefWatch – Tottenham Hotspur Vs Arsenal (02-10-2011 – 16:00)

Posted on by DogFace



Untold Arsenal on Twitter @UntoldArsenal


By DogFace

  • Referee: Mike Dean
  • Assistant 1: Stuart Burt
  • Assistant 2: Scott Ledger
  • 4th Official: Anthony Taylor

Good morning stat-fans and welcome to RefWatch.

This weekend we face our old foes Tottenham and this time it’s a match that our friends in the tabloids must be licking their chops over – if we lose this, and lose badly, it will be fertile ground to sow further the seeds of discontent among the Arsenal faithful… if we win – well, they’ll probably go quiet and mumble something about us being lucky and swiftly move on to more important things like speculating ad nauseam about our defensive ‘frailties’ and Robin van Persie’s contract negotiation ‘crisis’ et cetera.

So – with that in mind we had better hope that we’ve got a good referee… let’s have a look at him:

  • Full name: Mike Leslie Dean
  • Date of birth: 02-Jun-1968 (Age 43)
  • Place of birth: The Wirral
  • Resides: Cheshire (as in cat)
  • EPL Referee Since: 2000/2001
  • EPL Games to date: 256

It's slightly worrying when you google for an image of Mike Dean and this is on page one - many thanks go to the unkown MUFC PSP artist from http://thebusbyway.com/ for this gem.
Mike Dean, Mike Dean – we know just what you mean!

It’s Mike Dean again… you remember him – he’s the referee that gave us (on average) 3 yellow cards per game in the 2009/2010 season and yet still couldn’t stop us from topping the fair play league… come on – you must remember the 2008/2009 season where he only sent off black and Irish players (we have to assume no dogs were fielded that season by any clubs)… or that time that he was suspended from his duties in 2005 due to his links to an online betting site called ‘Arbitros’ [Spanish for Referees]?

Hmmm…

Well – how about that time when we played Tottenham Hotspur in 2009; he was the ref that disallowed Eboué’s goal and booked him for questioning his authoritie and then sent him off on a second yellow for having the uppityness to ask if he should wait for the whistle before a free kick (Media Watch should check some of the post match pap articles for this game – it’s clear that they never watched it or they were just playing apologist for the kink in the rails that the gravy train runneth).

Ring any bells?

How about in 2010 when Mike “when I saw Mike Dean I did worry” Dean was demoted [until the heat blew over] for the title deciding farce between Manchester United and Chelsea where Dean was on spectacular random form by allowing an offside goal for Chelsea and turning down 3 penalties for United?

OK then – you must remember the game against United in 2009 when the Cheshire Cat sent Wenger to the stands for the temerity of hoofing a water bottle in his frustration at seeing RvP ruled offside yet again [he blamed it on Lee Probert despite the fact that the 4th official does not have the power to send anyone anywhere]? That was the game that he turned down 2 Arsenal penalties and carded 6 of our players – we got the living shit kicked out of us that day as I recall… yet they [the media hyenas] all mocked Wenger the next day for his ‘Jesus Christ’ pose among the glory hunting tormenters making ‘wanker’ signs at him.

OK then – if you don’t remember that, then how about the 2011 match between Tottenham and Manchester United when he held United to a draw via some creative chaos and a straight red for Rafael? And while we are on the subject – he also officiated the 2008 FA cup final between Portsmouth and Cardiff in which Harry Redknapp’s Porrtsmouth squeaked it 0-1? Or the 2011 Carling cup final between Arsenal and Birmingham where Mike Dean literally jumped for joy when he blew the final whistle at 1-2 to Birmingham… maybe he’s got a thing about dishing out tin to clubs about to sully the good name of the EPL by imploding financially?

Ok then – if you don’t remember any of that (and why should you, after all nobody made a big deal of it) then maybe you remember the Arsenal Vs. Birmingham match at St. Andrews on the 23/02/2008 where Dean’s failure to clamp down on ‘robust’ and ‘firm but fair’ [English] challenges saw that Johnny (Brazilian and/or Croatian but NOT English) Foreigner Eduardo have his foot removed from his leg? Do you recall the pundits and peers saying it was pure bad luck as Eduardo was a bit tricky and it [the challenge from Taylor] was “not even a yellow card” in their opinion? Oh yes – even back in 2008… Martin Taylor was cast as a gentle giant and Wenger the wicked Frenchman for critisising him when he was obviously ‘in bits’ at what he gone done – how long have we been sleeping eh Gooners and how long have we been conditioned on how we should think?

The final score was 2-2 – one goal from a dodgy free kick and the second from a move that started with Adebayor having his shorts pulled off in the Birmingham penalty area and ended with Stuart Parnaby performing a swan dive to win a penalty from Clichy’s clearance in the final seconds.

I still believe that we would have won the EPL that season and that’s the point where the ‘Arsenal collapse’ [sic] talking point started… never forget the origin of these things – this was our seasonal ‘Busacca Moment’ if you like and it was Mike Dean who dealt it.

The media blamed Gallas; the black man with the silly haircut, and nodded sagely while dishing out such ‘talking points’ as ‘Petulance’, ‘Maturity’, ‘Mental Strength’, ‘Frenchness’ and ‘Spine’ – before using their English sense of ‘Fair Play’ to hound Eduardo out of the country by labelling him a ‘Cheat’ and making him their poster boy for their very own CheatWatch… that is until Gerrard and Rooney’s names kept getting put forward in their ‘shame the divers’ campaign and it all sort of just fizzled out.

I digress, where was I – oh yes; do you remember Mike Dean now? He is the Chesire Cat who slowly fades into the background, after a time you’ll forget he was even there… and all that remains will be his shit-eating grin.

Let’s check out his stats!

FPB = Fouls Per Booking (vertical axis) BPM = Bookings Per Match(line width) AHS = Asian Handicap Swing i.e. the deviation from the expected result(vertical axis) PPG = Points Per Game(line width) Therefore a high thin line for FPB/BPM would indicate a lot of fouls and very little bookings – and a low thin line for AHS/PPG would indicate an underperformance against the betting line and very few points taken.

Mike Dean has had 31 games for Tottenham Hotspur consisting of 13 wins, 10 draws and 8 losses.

Tottenham Hotspur are currently in 7th in Mike Dean’s personal Points Per Game League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the English Premier, with an average of 1.58 PPG.

In Mike Dean’s personal Handicap Swing League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the English Premier, Tottenham Hotspur come 7th with an average positive swing of 0.25.

Tottenham Hotspur are currently in 7th in Mike Dean’s personal Booking’s Per Match League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the English Premier, with an overall average of 1.61 BPM.

In Mike Dean’s personal Fouls Per Booking League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the English Premier, Tottenham Hotspur come 9th with an overall average of 6.86 FPB.

If we look at the graph (above) we can see an interesting crossover of the FPB/BPM [red] and the Opposition FPB/BPM [Orange] lines – this I would say is a text book counter intuitive case for use of the booking data to find bias. As you can see when Tottenham Hotspur’s opposition foul more and get booked less; Tottenham’s PPG/AHS actually gets higher and fatter i.e. they display an over performance.

An explanation for this is that somewhere in the 2008/2009 season, Mike Dean started to give Tottenham a lot of free kicks for innocuous challenges and only gave free kicks/bookings to Tottenham for the more serious fouls – although despite the higher FPB Tottenham exhibit [in the 2008/2009 and 2009/2010 seasons] they still get booked less than their opposition under Mike Dean.

The colour of the line represents the player type. The position of the line against the vertical axis will indicate the average time of the booking and the thickness of the line indicates the average number of bookings of players in that position. Therefore a high fat orange line would indicate that the referee often books the specified teams defence out of the challenge early, a low thin line or no line would indicate the opposite. The number of minutes bottoms out at 100 to indicate no bookings.

Above we can see a breakdown of the booking information for Tottenham Hotspur under Mike Dean. We can see that Mike Dean fairly consistently books Tottenham’s Midfield and defence at some point in the second half – although this has shown a different trend [last season] as Mike Dean booked them earlier in the match and less. We can also see in the 2010/2011 season a few very late bookings going in for substitutes and the Goalkeeper.

The colour of the line represents the player type. The position of the line against the vertical axis will indicate the average time of the booking and the thickness of the line indicates the average number of bookings of players in that position. Therefore a high fat orange line would indicate that the referee often books the specified teams defence out of the challenge early, a low thin line or no line would indicate the opposite. The number of minutes bottoms out at 100 to indicate no bookings.

If we move on now to look at How Mike Dean treats Tottenham’s opposition (above) we can see a large number of bookings in the midfield and the defence around the half way mark from the 2008/2009 season onwards. We also see the opposition strikers receiving significant and earlier bookings in time although these are trending later (all around the 60 minute mark) but with more bookings last season.

Let’s have a look now at how Arsenal fair under the whistle of Mike Dean:

FPB = Fouls Per Booking (vertical axis) BPM = Bookings Per Match(line width) AHS = Asian Handicap Swing i.e. the deviation from the expected result(vertical axis) PPG = Points Per Game(line width) Therefore a high thin line for FPB/BPM would indicate a lot of fouls and very little bookings – and a low thin line for AHS/PPG would indicate an underperformance against the betting line and very few points taken.

Mike Dean has had 27 games for Arsenal consisting of 13 wins, 9 draws and 5 losses.

Arsenal are currently in 4th in Mike Dean’s personal Points Per Game League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the English Premier, with an average of 1.78 PPG.

In Mike Dean’s personal Handicap Swing League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the English Premier, Arsenal come 18th with an average negative swing of -0.35.

Arsenal are currently in 18th in Mike Dean’s personal Booking’s Per Match League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the English Premier, with an overall average of 2.07 BPM.

In Mike Dean’s personal Fouls Per Booking League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the English Premier, Arsenal come 21st with an overall average of 5.63 FPB.

OK the very first thing that strikes me (like a punch to the goolies), in the above graph, is the anaemic blue line that represents (2008/2009 season excepted) a consistent underperformance against the handicap and a very low, on average, points per game – it dwindles, last season, to an average underperformance of -1.13 goals and 0 points per game.

You can also see by the fatness of the Red line that we get booked more than our opposition (the orange line), under Mike Dean, who sail high and thin indicating that they get away with more fouls per booking and are booked a lot less, on average, per game than Arsenal – this is a good contrast to Tottenham’s figures in their graph – you can see that their line (despite being below the orange line) still remains thinner on average than their opposition and this seems to play out in their positive results.

This interestingly could be a key marker in making intuitive sense of the FPB/BPM data with regards to bias – I will have to investigate this further.

The colour of the line represents the player type. The position of the line against the vertical axis will indicate the average time of the booking and the thickness of the line indicates the average number of bookings of players in that position. Therefore a high fat orange line would indicate that the referee often books the specified teams defence out of the challenge early, a low thin line or no line would indicate the opposite. The number of minutes bottoms out at 100 to indicate no bookings.

Wow – you can really see where those bookings were being taken – last season Mike Dean took our Defenders out of the challenge with a huge average amount of bookings (3 BPM) averaging out at around the early stages of the second half – we have also seen a steady stream of bookings in the Midfield – although Mike Dean didn’t book our Attack or Goalkeepers at all last season at all.

The colour of the line represents the player type. The position of the line against the vertical axis will indicate the average time of the booking and the thickness of the line indicates the average number of bookings of players in that position. Therefore a high fat orange line would indicate that the referee often books the specified teams defence out of the challenge early, a low thin line or no line would indicate the opposite. The number of minutes bottoms out at 100 to indicate no bookings.

As we can see – our opposition, under Mike Dean, are trending toward getting booked fewer and later – last season saw only our oppositions Midfield and Substitutes get booked by Dean, on average, fairly late in the second half.

Let’s move on now to check out how Mike Dean performs against selected teams in the EPL:

The ine thickness represents the average Points Per Game and the position of the line against the vertical axis represents the average swing againd the handicap.

Ok – we can see clearly Arsenal’s dire results of late under Mike Dean there [thin blue line] as we scrape the bottom of the barrel in both our performance against the handicap and our points per game. We can also see some terrific progress from Chelsea in Mike Dean’s stats whose [orange] line is getting both fatter and higher to indicate an over performance and a good return in the way of points. Tottenham Hotspur’s line really picks up from the 2008/2009 season onwards and this has given me pause to think :– what exactly happened to Tottenham in that season to cause this change in fortunes for them under Mike Dean?

The only thing that I could think of was the arrival of Harry Redknapp to the club, from Portsmouth, for his first game on the 26/10/2008.

So, me being me – I decided to see how Portsmouth faired before and after the 2008/2009 season under Mike Dean and compare this with Tottenham:

The ine thickness represents the average Points Per Game and the position of the line against the vertical axis represents the average swing againd the handicap.

Now this is curious… we can see Portsmouth’s performance under Mike Dean plummet as Tottenham’s rise against the handicap (before breaking even last season) – I have checked these clubs figures under multiple referee’s and nowhere is the contrast as marked as this… so this could be the ‘Redknapp Effect’ – but this effect is only as especially marked under one referee; Mike Dean.

But this graph surely only tells half the story as Harry Redknapp joined Tottenham Hotspur mid season (2008/2009)… so to get a more accurate picture of the relative performance of Harry Redknapp’s teams under Mike Dean – we have to create a new graph which ignores the teams and models performance on a Manager/Referee basis… it was a major ball-ache to code this graph but I found myself blessed with the indefatigable motivation of a bloodhound on the scent of a sly old fox.

So – for your pleasure:

The ine thickness represents the average Points Per Game and the position of the line against the vertical axis represents the average swing againd the handicap.

I’ve thrown Juande Ramos in for good measure (as he was the Tottenham Manager immediately before Harry Redknapp) and Sam Allardyce just to give you some perspective – I’ve also thrown in the mix Alex Ferguson and our own Arsene Wenger as examples of top class Managers.

Now what is really rather interesting here is the rise of Harry Redknapp [the climbing fat red line] – his line on the graph streaks through Mike Dean’s figures like a rocket and easily out-performs not only Arsene Wenger (who does unbelievably badly under Mike Dean) but also Alex Ferguson?! Again – I cannot find a similar correlation with any other EPL referee… but also look at zero points Juande – with the same team as Harry had, you can see a drop in performance, on average, of over 3 goals against the handicap with Mike Dean as the referee…

…So what’s that all about then?

As an aside and for your contemplation; Stoke tried to have Mike Dean replaced as the referee against Tottenham in 2010 – they compiled a dossier of ‘evidence’ as to why he would be unsuitable for this fixture and presented it in good time prior to the match to Mike Riley, the general manager of PGMOL.

The dossier was ignored (and I suspect never read) and the game went ahead as planned; Dean Whitehead [of Stoke] saw a red card and Harry Redknapp’s Tottenham romped home with a 2-1 win.

Now what bothers me here is after having Howard Webb at Old Trafford – we, Arsenal, now have Mike Dean with a Redknapp team… who is picking these referee’s and are they conscious at all of their statistics, this is the worst possible combination we could hope for – as Walter said in his recent article: it makes you wonder.

And it make you wonder even more if we look at the amount of times that certain referee’s are allocated to games with certain managers – this is a ‘Top 10’ breakdown of appointments since the 2005/2006 season:

Manager Name Referee Games
Alex Ferguson Howard Webb 22
Harry Redknapp Mike Dean 22
David Moyes Howard Webb 20
David Moyes Alan Wiley 19
Rafael Benitez Alan Wiley 19
David Moyes Peter Walton 19
David Moyes Phil Dowd 18
Martin O'Neill Steve Bennett 18
Alex Ferguson Chris Foy 18
Arsene Wenger Howard Webb 18

Therefore this appointment will make it a chart topping 23 for Mike Dean and Harry Redknapp… does familiarity breed contempt – it would seem not in this case.

So, what can we expect from this game? The Predictortron gives Tottenham Hotspur a 0.746796 of a goal advantage… it’s a Super duper Sunday game and Tottenham are the hot favourites (a LOT of mug money on this one) – so who knows – but I’ll leave you with a quote from a fellow Arsenal supporter, who messaged me this, immediately upon hearing that Mike Dean got the North London derby:

“It’s my favourite game of the year to go to, but I am now feeling pessimistic to a high degree. I shall watch with anger as he systematically books our midfield in the first 20mins. I will then start grabbing my hair as he plays advantage for spurs whilst not allowing us the same pleasure. I will then begin to shit into a hotdog wrapper as he gives a phantom penalty and sends off our players. I will then hurl said shit at Mr Dean when he proceeds to stop the game in the last 5 minutes, to book the spurs players in order to ‘even’ up his stats.” – @NeilBrooksAFC

I really hope he’s wrong… and I must stress that Untold Arsenal does not condone the hurling of faecal matter at PGMOL officials, no matter how much we feel they may deserve it.


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42 Replies to “RefWatch – Tottenham Hotspur Vs Arsenal (02-10-2011 – 16:00)”

  1. Yes I have no doubt that we are going to lose to Tottenham on Sunday due to the dodgy refereeing of Mike Dean, but maybe, if we all go out and stick £50 on the totts to win at 6/5 (I know it will hurt but it returns £110) it will give the bookies something to think about on Monady morning.
    A lot of single £50 bets going on a totts home win would, I am sure, provoke the bookies into an inquiry of some sort on Monday morning, assuming Dean is able to have his usual effect.

  2. Thanks i really love this,this is wonderful…..Mike Dean,Webb,and Wiley etc.Infact all Ref in EPL are against the gooners even the FA…Anyway we all know why if you are real gooner.Please want to ask where is this leading English football? NO where……….But we are going to win this sunday.

  3. Dogface,
    I’ve written on this before, and I hope you’ll start to take a broader view It’s not only Dean. It’s also Anthony Taylor (evil twin to Martin Taylor), who last season was involved in several matches where we were hard done by. I’m trying to urge you to also include at least some of the PAIRINGS – it’s not only the referee but also the supporting cast and Taylor have been part of the problem. Please go back through soem of the match reviews from last season and you’ll see his name atop the RefWatches and you can zero in on whee Taylor had a hand in the mix.

  4. Hi bob – I’m of the opinion that the assistant referees are the obiedient lackies of the Select Group officials, they are in constant microphone contact with the man on the pitch… but I agree – some analysis of the assistants might reveal some interesting stats.

    I’ve been trying to aquire accurate data for all assistants, going back a few years, for some time now – it’s not as easy as you might think!

    Also – I used to do 4th official data in the early days – but the articles got too long… so I might have to find a way to re-include that in a compressed form..?

  7. Dogface, what an excellent article! The picture alone had me spitting out my coffee.

    You have certainly jogged the memory cells about Dean. With him as the ref, we are definately the underdogs.

  8. Chod Bin – one can always tell the people who dont get out much by the way that they are unable to conduct any sort of coherent conversation or write more than five words.

  9. There are two referee articles that have knocked me out in recent days. This one – must have taken you ages to do Dogface, – and the last Liverpool match which recorded

    Wrong calls against Liverpool 0
    Wrong calls against Wolverhampton 9

    As the reviewer there says…

    Every single contentious decision went the Liverpool way, it saddened me. In the aftermath of Dalglish meeting Riley to discuss bias against Liverpool, were there dark forces at work. We will probably never know but having watched the game twice, and re wound many moments, It was not a good day at the office for K Friend. And Liverpool were the beneficiaries.

    This focus on referees is key and I believe we are sneaking closer and closer to developing an unanswerable position concerning how bent the Premier League now is.

    I’ll be doing a piece on this shortly, drawing some of these points together – but one can only be amazed at how blatant this all is.

    Clearly the refs think there is no chance of them getting caught, and they are becoming more and more open in what they do.

  10. Yes… it took a while Tony but I still managed to get out a bit!

    I’m loving my new Manager/Referee tool… playing with it now, why didn’t I think of this before!?

  11. Impressive work, Dogface. I can’t believe you managed to put so much data together. Every year Dean pulls another rabbit out of his hat when he’s officiating Arsenal. It makes me really worry about Sunday. I give my full support to our team as ever and hope for a positive result, but the foreknowledge that Dean will stop us from playing our game is not a pleasant thought.

    With the new Manager/Referee tool, how long until we can see a graph for the duo Webb/Ferguson?

  12. Dogface, you really and truly amaze me.

    Obviously bookies like to know ALL the odds for and against before setting a price? That is why I believe sport and betting should be kept at arms length. Your research does you credit and more strength to your arm or keyboard finger(s).

  13. @Notoverthehill – thanks… spent a bit more time on this one and I’m always trying to improve RefWatch – every now and then you get one of those games and you just have to take it to another level.

    So – let’s hope the boys can take it to another level and do it on the pitch – we’ll be kicking up-hill on Sunday if Dean’s form is anything to go by!

  14. The history is alarming, Mike Dean the Cheshire Cat clearly has an Arsenal Issue, perhaps it is because he is Liverpool Fan and has never quite got over “Mickey Thomas and Its up For grabs”.

    We are on to him, and he should be aware that we are on to him. he is not a very good ref, his integrity has been exposed with the gambling thing. had the EPL any Integrity they would have got shot of him there and then.

  15. Reviewer,
    Well said. But EPL. And Integrity? These two words cannot inhabit the same sentence. A ref with that record is there because he has that record. He is useful and they’ve got his back. He’s being taken care of and he’s taking care of his caretakers. If we’re hard done by him again, we should launch a petition for his removal and demand fair play across the league.

    Walter,
    As discussed this past summer, perhaps someone should edit the video replays on The Dean’s wrong calls (especially any game-changers), and, as a complement to the Ref-Review have it posted to YouTube and call massive attention to it. If we could have a Ref Review with a complementary Video review for creatures like The Dean, we would have a brilliant living indictment of what they do for all to see. This might add an element of needed stability to this all too frequent, run-amok situation.

  16. I also remember the Burnley game where we were not given 2 penalties in the first 15 minutes and then got a correct penalty against us at the first opportunity to level the score.

  17. Bob, I have tried to start this but then my old laptop collapsed and I never found the time to start it again as everything was lost.

  18. Walter,
    I completely empathize. Backups are essential and I’ve lost more than I could bear remembering. Extra RAM doesn’t ever hurt, so your son will surely help thereabouts. Cheers.

  19. Riley should internalise these graphs; torn into shreds and poked up his arse piece by piece with a pencil.. This type of research is the sort of thing he should be doing in order to make sure there is no match fixing and to prove the integrity of the game. With so much match fixing around- why does everyone assume that people like Dean are going to be ‘squeeky’? Just look at him for God’s sake!

  20. All, Ref 02,
    Please note what Ref02 has written about Liverpool-Wolves in his review today (Fri). It’s remarkable: 100% of the wrong calls went against Wolves. That is a statistical outlier of extreme infrequency. Or, in Ref terms, perhaps becoming the standard deviation from the norm. This after a wee visit was paid by Daglish to the Hives of Riley to lodge a wee complaint, at least. My point is to drive some of our attention to this piece and its potential implications for Arsenal and league-wide. Do have a look and commend Ref 02 for his sharp-eyed work and strong writing. This deserves readership and commentary – it doesn’t NOT apply to Arsenal. In this case, at least, we are all Wolverhampton!

  21. @ bob

    Well said. I also was horrified at the performance of the ref at Liverpool-Wolves. I hope some of the Wolves fans have access to the Untold Review.

  22. Still on Liverpool – it will be interesting to see how the Everton-liverpool match is refereed. If Everton are shafted by the ref it would suggest there is a move to “support” Liverpool back into the top 4, probably at our expense.

  23. To be honest the more Untold uncovers about the likes of Dean and some of his colleagues if thats the correct description.
    The more sickened I feel, I dont think I will be happy till eventualy some of them are sacked or found out for what they really are be it biased/corrupt etc.

  25. DogFace,
    In the remarkable interview with Mark Hughes speaking about Mike Dean’s mis-call, Hughes said that Dean overruled his linesman TWICE, once in each half. He plays it cool, but he also says that the linesman told Dean that the player was offside and, so the goal would be disallowed. But, as Dean ignored this, Hughes understatedly puts it like this: “… so Mike Dean had something to do with it.” And, Dean had already left the pitch, making it impossible for Hughes to find out anything more about the call, so he resignedly says, there’s nothing we can do about it. The subtext and implication are that they were hard done by to the benefit of our Sunday’s opponent. OMG.

  26. Funny how the media can find their way to Le Groan and pretend it represents Arsenal fan discontent and yet this gift to investigative journalism goes unreported.
    Tony – do you regularly bombard the media with these excellent reports? If so the very fact that they are ignored tells a story.

  27. Steww, no I don’t tell the media, about what we do, but I know from odds and ends that we are read. Indeed even Mr Wenger occasionally quotes us!

    The fact is no journalist is going to acknowledge us because we are attacking the very fundamental of contemporary football journalism at every level. First we are saying the media is hopelessly biased, and second we are saying the EPL is bent. A bent EPL is a one-off story and it is complex. What they want is the everyday soap opera that is simple to understand.

  28. We are pissing into the wind with this one mates as, even if we had irrefutable video,audio, eyewitness and divine proof of the referees, the EPL, the FA and the managers being involved in match fixing, bribing, tapping up, buggering the Queen or whatever…it would be politely ignored and we would be told we were just being ¨sore losers¨, and exhibiting ¨sour grapes¨ at our unfortunate destiny!

  29. Great article. We all already know Dean so well.. Makes you wonder why we’re still watching the EPL

  30. ROFL (and a big one) at the pic and it’s caption.

    Sorry don’t have the patience to go through all the data that you put up. I just can’t imagine the hard work accumulating it. Hats off.

  31. You can skip to the end Critic where I disect the ‘relationship’ between Mike Dean and Harry Redknapp… strange attractors some might say! 😉

  32. @ Dogface

    Excellent review. I am trying to decide what Dean and ‘Arry have in common.

    I assume Dean avoided court following his suspension over the online betting site and so far ‘Arry also seems to be doing a good job of avoiding his date in court!

  34. @Micko – how are you spending your ill gotten gain… I want a % of that BTW! 😉

    SO – what with Wenger not shaking hands with some nobody and a few idiots singing something rather nasty to Adebayore – that’ll be the news stiched up then. If I were you I would focus on that and ignore everything else; even the spurs fans spitting on Sagna while he lay helpless with a broken leg…

    …Meanwhile the Cheshire Cat fades slowly into the background.

  35. Dogface
    I’ve got over £100 sitting in my online account now, just by betting on the dodgy refs against Arsenal this season. It’s painful but I figure if there is nothing I can actually do about it then at least get something out of it i.e. cash.
    I started with just £20 !
    It will be interesting to see how much I have at the end of the season. I’m afraid you cannot have a cut though as I’ve been keeping notes on the refs myself (since the 2007/08 season;).
    My first notes on Dean were on the Newcastle away game on the 5th December, although I missed the first hour of the game.
    Here they are:-

    Newcastle v Arsenal 5th December 2007
    Score 1-1
    Ref Mike Dean
    Missed most of the game due to Jim’s Requiem Mass.
    But apparently ref was letting multiple terrible fouls by Newcastle go unpunished during the first half.
    Saw the end of the game and Ref let toon defender blatantly obstruct Adebayor when clean through on goal TWICE. We should have had a free-kick and defender should have been sent off.

    It’s a shame we couldn’t get 40-50 people having a £50 flutter on Mike Dean winning on Sunday, as having previously worked for a bookies, I know that they look out very closely for unusual betting patterns and would have therefore have looked into the preformance of the referee.

  36. Bollocks to that – give me my 10%! 😀

    In large liquidity games like this – any bets that go with the favourite are pretty much under the radar.

  37. Can not believe what i was reading!! So what’s the way forward?
    Don’t you guys think these asshol.s have a mission to relegated us??

  38. I think they are trying to keep us out of the top 4. Liverpool, Newcastle, and Tottenham have been getting some favorable performances from the refs, and we seem to be getting shafted bar one or two matches.

  39. Tottenham games reffed by Dean… 31 Games – 13 wins 10 draws 8 losses = 52 points

    Arsenal games reffed by Dean…. 27 Games – 13 wins 9 draws 5 losses = 51 points

    How about instead of spouting bullshit check some of your facts out no bias there

  40. Hi Howard,
    with the knowledge you seem to have why don’t you take a look at when Arsenal won their points under Dean and since when it suddenly turned from good to bad. Why don’t you check those facts, come back and well since you are at it: why don’t you tell us why it all suddenly changed?

  41. Howard Webb,
    You forgot to add info about the number of incorrect decisions made in each teams favour. Best you check the full facts first

  42. Also your stats are laughable and only assume that each team should have the same points.

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