RefWatch – Everton Vs Arsenal (21/03/2012 – 20:00)

Posted on by DogFace



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By DogFace

  • Referee: Lee Mason
  • Assistant 1: John Flynn
  • Assistant 2: Mick McDonough
  • 4th Official: Jonathan Moss

Good morning stat-fans and welcome to RefWatch… A bit of a lazy one from me today as, rather inconsiderately, I have loads of work on at the moment.

Here’s how the markets read it:

Asian Handicap (betting line) market:

Home Handicap Away
1.900 1/4 – 0 2.000

The Under/Over market:

Over Handicap Under
1.975 2 1/2 1.925

The betting line is interesting with Arsenal giving a quarter ball (one quarter of a goal) – I would say that on a level playing field we should be better than that – more in the region of 1 and a half goals… alas I am not an Asian Bookie and these guys make their markets very carefully indeed.

Let’s have a look at the Referee:

  • Full name: Lee S. Mason
  • Date of birth: 29-Oct-1971 (Age 41)
  • Place of birth: Bolton
  • Resides: Lancashire
  • EPL/ECH Referee Since: 2002/2003
  • EPL/ECH Games to date: 180

Lee Mason
Lee Mason… with his face on.

It’s Lee Mason again… you remember him from the referee reviews – although I can’t seem to find links for them, I do have the results:

Season Score Match
2010/2011 47.000% Arsenal 2 – 1 Everton
2011/2012 72.000% Chelsea 2 – 1 West Bromwich Albion
2011/2012 56.600% Arsenal 3 – 1 Stoke City
2011/2012 65.000% Manchester United 1 – 0 Sunderland
Average Score: 60.150%

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.

Lee Mason has had 15 games for Everton consisting of 7 wins, 5 draws and 3 losses.

Everton are currently in 9th in Lee Mason’s personal Points Per Game League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the EPL/ECH, with an average of 1.73 PPG.

In Lee Mason’s personal Handicap Swing League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the EPL/ECH, Everton come 6th with an average positive swing of 0.23.

Everton are currently in 7th in Lee Mason’s personal Booking’s Per Match League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the EPL/ECH, with an overall average of 1.33 BPM.

In Lee Mason’s personal Fouls Per Booking League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the EPL/ECH, Everton come 2nd with an overall average of 10.20 FPB.

Up until last season Everton and Lee Mason seemed to get on extraordinarily well – the 2009/2010 season particularly stands out as Lee let Everton get away with more fouls than my graph can comfortably handle. This is reflected in Everton’s massive over performance that season… although the following season the trend was reversed somewhat and Everton performed poorly i.e. there seems to be a good correlation between what Lee Mason let’s Everton get away with inn the challenge and their average Points Per Game and swing against the handicap. There is a distinct trend from 2008/2009 of Lee becoming more punitive towards Everton’s opposition (as can be seen in the orange line getting lower and fatter to indicate more Fouls Per Booking and Bookings Per Match respectively).

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 is a seasonal breakdown on how, when and where Everton took all their bookings under Lee Mason.

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 is a seasonal breakdown on how, when and where Everton’s opposition took all their bookings under Lee Mason.

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.

Lee Mason has had 8 games for Arsenal consisting of 4 wins, 2 draws and 2 losses.

Arsenal are currently in 8th in Lee Mason’s personal Points Per Game League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the EPL/ECH, with an average of 1.75 PPG.

In Lee Mason’s personal Handicap Swing League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the EPL/ECH, Arsenal come 10th with an average positive swing of 0.03.

Arsenal are currently in 29th in Lee Mason’s personal Booking’s Per Match League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the EPL/ECH, with an overall average of 2.38 BPM.

In Lee Mason’s personal Fouls Per Booking League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the EPL/ECH, Arsenal come 30th with an overall average of 4.16 FPB.

Our record under Lee Mason used to be pretty bad and we can see from the graph that we have some large under performances in the 2006/2007 and 2009/2010 seasons. This has changed recently though and we can see a good return in points from the 2010/2011 season onwards. Although let us not forget the Saha offside goal in the 2010/2011 season against Everton that first gained him some notoriety among the Arsenal fanbase… we went on to win that match anyway and that was in no small part due to the crowd who turned on Lee, scrutinising every decision, after seeing the instant replay.

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 is a seasonal breakdown on how, when and where Arsenal took all their bookings under Lee Mason.

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 is a seasonal breakdown on how, when and where Arsenal’s opposition took all their bookings under Lee Mason.

Let’s move on now to check out how Lee Mason 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.

Lee Mason’s EPL graph doesn’t really show much in the way of clear trends in terms of bias – in the 2007/2008 season Lee didn’t have any games for Arsenal/Everton/Chelsea/Manchester United and this confuses the graph slightly. The poor results for Arsenal and good results for Everton in Lee Mason’s history do worry me slightly, especially as I find Lee Mason a difficult referee to read in terms of ‘style’ and also because this is an away game and we won’t have the noise on our side.

Saying this we should have an advantage due to our long rest period in the run up to this game. Everton are in the middle of a very heavy schedule at the moment so they will do doubt tire in the second half.

If we go at this match at a high pace, keep patient and take our chances I think we could take something from it – we’ll see how Everton set themselves up… if they are allowed to get away with a lot in the challenge and break up the play then they may well look to defend, hitting us on the break and look to nick it.


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16 Replies to “RefWatch – Everton Vs Arsenal (21/03/2012 – 20:00)”

  1. Nooooooooooo not Mason..he’s clueless shite..would have preferred to have Andre Merrina..

  3. I do recall Mason sharing a joke(at least that is what it looked like, with both chuckling away?) … with Emmanuel Frimpong …. and he was not booked in that game.
    So the key is, have a friendly chat with him?

  5. Hi Dogface, what’s the Predictortron’s verdict? Couldn’t see it in the article …

  6. 30 minutes in and Lee Mason looks like he’s tilting the pitch against Arsenal.

  7. AT halftime , it looks like it’s going to be hard for Arsenal to win this with Mason in this kind of mindset. Mason books Sagna when Cahill, Heitinga, and Pienaar got away with worse.

    I must admit that Drenthe looked just onside for their disallowed goal, but that was a linesman error as opposed to Mason’s doing.

  9. mason is an utter cunt..his performance is on par with probert at fulham..we all know how that game ended…lets hope it doesnt end that way

  15. One nil to the Arsenal will do me, well done to the team, this was a tough match and a good win – as for Mason – pathetic.

  16. Big respect to the team, but i’m really fed up with these PGMOL referees. I feel we need to start something, try make these referees accountable to their decisions. How about an On-line Petition? I found HM Government free E-Petition website, where you can:

    “Search existing e-petitions before creating a new one
    Create your e-petition
    It will be checked by a government department
    An e-petition can be open for up to 1 year
    The public can sign it
    If you collect 100,000 signatures, your e-petition could be debated in the House of Commons”

    ?????
    Up the Gunners!!!

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