Untold Ref Review: Everton 0 – 1 Arsenal

Posted on by WalterBroeckx

Today’s referee is Lee Mason – Well we had the same ref as in last season’s game at the Emirates. The offside goal from Everton was very controversial and was the start of a very bad string of ref performances against Arsenal. How did he do this time?

MATCH REVIEW DETAILS – Lee Mason (2012-03-21)
Period 1
Min Type Foul from On C/NC Comment Weight
8 GOAL Arsenal C correct goal 3
10 OTHER Gibbs Drenthe C assumed correct, not shown on TV 1
13 OTHER Vermaelen Jelavic C A high foot 1
15 OTHER Cahill NC Cahill makes the ball unplayable by actually clamping it on the ground between his legs 1
21 OTHER Heitinga RVP C tackle from behind 1
23 OFFSIDE Everton C correct call 1
23 OTHER Fellaini Arteta NC Push not given 1
24 OFFSIDE Everton C assumed correct not really visible 1
26 OTHER Pienaar Walcott C Tripped him in full speed 1
26 YELLOW Pienaar C Ref warns him, defensible at the time as nothing has happened until now 2
27 OTHER Ramsey Cahill C Trip 1
30 OTHER Cahill? Koscielny NC Clipped his heel in the Arsenal penalty area, ref signals advantage. 1
31 OFFSIDE Everton NC Drenthe was not offside when the ball was played 1
31 GOAL Everton NC Was a correct goal 3
32 OTHER Fellaini Arteta NC Push not given 1
34 OTHER Arteta Pienaar C Trip 1
36 OTHER Cahill Gibbs C Flying tackle from behind 1
37 YELLOW Cahill NC This should have been a yellow card and certainly after the warning he had given earlier on 2
38 OTHER Pienaar Vermaelen C Comes in flying with studs showing 1
38 YELLOW Pienaar NC Surely after being warned personally earlier on and with another rash challenge the card must have been shown this time. Again the ref doesn’t act 2
39 OTHER Sagna Pienaar C Came late and tripped him 1
39 YELLOW Sagna NC It would have been correct if the ref had given the cards earlier on against Everton. 2
41 OFFSIDE Everton C looked a correct decision 1
42 OFFSIDE Everton C correct decision 1
46 OTHER Fellaini Vermaelen C Little clip of the heel 1
Period 2
Min Type Foul from On C/NC Comment Weight
46 OTHER Ramsey Drenthe C Litlle push 1
47 OTHER Sagna Pienaar NC Pienaar wrapped himself around Sagna and then went down 1
48 OTHER NC A Everton throw is taken at the wrong place, refs stops play and let them throw again 1
48 OTHER Vermaelen Pienaar C Headed a bit low and therefore got hit by the swing of the leg after Vermaelen cleared the ball. Ref stopped the game 1
52 OTHER Cahill Koscielny NC Strong challenge that completely takes Koscielny out, ref signals advantage and while giving the signal it is lost. You then can come back to it ref. 1
52 YELLOW Cahill C When Arsenal kick the ball out with Koscielny still on the ground he gives the card. Finally. Could and should have been his second 2
53 OFFSIDE Everton NC Not offside 1
55 OTHER Fellaini Arteta NC Push not given 1
55 OTHER Arteta Drenthe NC Because of the push Arteta loses his balance and the ball and touches Drenthe, the ref now gives a foul 1
56 OTHER Vermaelen Jelavic C Jelavic knows Vermaelen is close and throws himself to Vermaelen to make contact. Amazing good call from the ref 1
57 OFFSIDE Arsenal NC Ramsey was onside 1
58 OTHER Cahill Walcott C Trip 1
59 PENALTY Drenthe Rosicky NC Clear trip in the penalty area coming in from behind, not even near the ball and touching the player. But nothing given 3
59 OTHER Vermaelen Jelavic C Trip 1
61 OTHER Pienaar Walcott C Came in from behind 1
61 YELLOW Pienaar C Finally, stopping a promising attack. Should have been his second yellow card by now 2
62 OFFSIDE Everton C correct call 1
65 OTHER Cahill Koscielny NC High foot not given 1
68 OTHER RVP Hibbert C block 1
68 OTHER Fellaini Song C Trip 1
69 OFFSIDE Arsenal C correct call 1
69 OTHER Pienaar Sagna C Trip 1
71 OFFSIDE Arsenal C correct call 1
74 OTHER Heitinga Rosicky NC he just lashes out to him and kicks him from behind, nothing given 1
74 OTHER Cahill Arteta NC Not much wrong with this one 2
76 OTHER Rosicky C Handball 1
77 OTHER Ramsey NC Handball?? He wfell to the floor after a collision and the ball touched his arm 1
80 OFFSIDE Everton C correct call 1
81 OTHER Arteta Anichebe C Push 1
85 OTHER Distin Rosicky NC Tripped him not given 1
87 OTHER Everton rvp C advantage given, defendable 1
87 OTHER Koscielny Jelavic C Trip 1
88 OTHER Fellaini Koscielny C push with both hands 1
89 OTHER C clash of heads ref stops play 1
91 OFFSIDE Everton C correct call 1
91 OFFSIDE Everton C assumed correct 1
92 OTHER RVP Hibbert C use of the arms 1

Let us take the bull by the horns. We were very lucky with the assistant raising his flag to rule Drenthe offside. He was onside so this was a very wrong decision. I had the impression that Szczesny had seen the flag and his effort was a bit flat to stop the ball. But still if Everton would have scored and it would have counted we would have had no complaints. So Everton can complain about this.

But we also have a big thing to complain about. In the second half Rosicky was brought down by Drenthe in the penalty area. Drenthe came from behind, planted his foot in front of Rosicky who went over it. A clear trip. But Mason gave nothing.  So if we come to the big calls missed by the ref (and his assistant) we can say we are even.

COMPETENCY SUMMARY – Lee Mason (2012-03-21)
Period 1 Called Total Correct %
GOAL 1 2 50.00
OFFSIDE 4 5 80.00
OTHER 10 14 71.43
YELLOW 1 4 25.00
TOTAL 16 25 64.00
WEIGHTED 19 33 57.58
Period 2 Called Total Correct %
OFFSIDE 6 8 75.00
OTHER 16 26 61.54
PENALTY 0 1 0.00
YELLOW 2 2 100.00
TOTAL 24 37 64.86
WEIGHTED 26 41 63.41
Totals Called Total Correct %
GOAL 1 2 50.00
OFFSIDE 10 13 76.92
OTHER 26 40 65.00
PENALTY 0 1 0.00
YELLOW 3 6 50.00
TOTAL 40 62 64.52
WEIGHTED 45 74 60.81

A score of around 64% is not good. Most people on the internet thought the ref was bad and the numbers confirm this.  It was also remarkable how many offside calls were wrong. The 99% claimed by the PGMOL was far out of reach and even then I had to give a few decisions because the images were not 100% clear. I really wonder if Mason had instructed his assistants to in case of doubt to call it offside. Maybe he did this with the game of last year in his head and wanted to avoid a repeat and give an offside goal on this occasion.

BIAS SUMMARY – Lee Mason (2012-03-21)
Period 1 Everton % Arsenal % Total
Correct For 6 40.00 9 60.00 15
Correct For Weighted 7 38.89 11 61.11 18
Incorrect Against 3 30.00 7 70.00 10
Incorrect Against Weighted 5 33.33 10 66.67 15
Fouls Commited 12 70.59 5 29.41 17
Fouls Penalised 8 66.67 5 100.00 13
Period 2 Everton % Arsenal % Total
Correct For 10 41.67 14 58.33 24
Correct For Weighted 10 38.46 16 61.54 26
Incorrect Against 2 15.38 11 84.62 13
Incorrect Against Weighted 3 18.75 13 81.25 16
Fouls Commited 17 65.38 9 34.62 26
Fouls Penalised 10 58.82 9 100.00 19
Totals Everton % Arsenal % Total
Correct For 16 41.03 23 58.97 39
Correct For Weighted 17 38.64 27 61.36 44
Incorrect Against 5 21.74 18 78.26 23
Incorrect Against Weighted 8 25.81 23 74.19 31
Fouls Commited 29 67.44 14 32.56 43
Fouls Penalised 18 62.07 14 100.00 32

The bias numbers are bad for Arsenal. But then again it business as usual almost for Arsenal to fight not just against the other team but also against the ref. Some light pushes were correct given when Arsenal did them. The only player from Arsenal that was treated in the same way was ex-Everton player Arteta. A coincidence?

Rosicky could be kicked and Heitinga did this very clear in the second half and no foul was given. The difference was blatant at times to see.

The most worrying aspect maybe is that last season we had the little riot when Mason treated us bad in the Everton game.  Cesc said what he thought about it and a few days later we went to Newcastle, played them off the park and then Dowd started his one man show and cost us the match and the 3 points.

And look at who we have again after the game against Everton and Mason?  Yes it will be Dowd once again. I will be keeping an eye on him from my seat in the Emirates this season.

Untold Referees

Wrong calls by the refs.  We compare Arsenal,  Chelsea, Liverpool, Man C, Man U, Tottenham

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40 Replies to “Untold Ref Review: Everton 0 – 1 Arsenal”

  3. I feel vindicated with my comments 🙂 I praised Mason for not giving the foul for the dive by Jelavic, because this would most likely also have been a red card for Vermaelen. I also said he gave a few soft free kicks to Arteta (though he also didn’t give much other times). The ones on Rosicky were simply shocking, and the Sagna yellow card was a joke considering he let Cahill and Peinaar off the hook earlier. At least we finally got a major decision go in our favour.

  4. I am with Chevre Chaud on this. If you watch the replays of the call you will see that Jelavic was always the most forward player on the pitch and never relinquished that position. He was even trying to get Drenthe’s attention as he would have had an even better angle at an open goal.

  5. @Legolas … I would not bother with Sky Sports or any of the major media. They are too stunted in their heads to listen to any evidence that does not fit their theories. Look, they are paid to stir the pot and give their “expert” opinion. I love the stats about the penalties given in the past 10 years and Arsenal received the most. Was there a breakdown over those 10 years to show trends and/or a split between Highbury and Emirates? With Henry at his peak at Highbury, it would stand to reason we would get more PK’s than the past few years? My “spidey senses” always go off when “journalists” or “experts” use the broadbrush technique.

    It will be interesting to see Dowd’s antics this Saturday. At least we will be home vs away. I addition, we are not likely to win the League and out of the FA Cup so the screw job has been done – maybe we will get a reasonable ref’d game instead of an “influenced” game.

  6. Wooby,
    You’re right that the screw job has been done.
    But the counter-screw is in full effect:
    If we finish third or better, and if we trumpet that to the heavens, we will then have achieved the moral victory in the hearts and minds of many fans, starting with our own worldwide. This will have great impact on many levels, within and outside the club. And, as icing on the cake, we will have the counter-story of this season: The Great Turnaround. My point: This will then become a season of two stories: (1) the mainstream media’s story — the predictable ref-shite assisted “Rednose XX”, the coronation of Lord Football; and (2) our resurrection from the lost plot of Arsene Wenger. So it’s “Rednose XX” versus “The Great Turnaround.” If we frame it along these lines and repeat it and party on it like it’s 2003/2004, then the season is OURS – in the hearts and minds where it really does count the most. Go Gunners!

  7. For his first offence ,Cahill was rightly given a yellow.For his 52nd min offence,he should have been sent off. This guy is without doubt a good player but over physical.
    Against AV another physical side,Arsenal could be confronted by uncompromising tackles. It’s up to the ref to punish the bully boys .Some of the AV players could provoke the gunners. If any gunner reacts,he has fallen into the trap.
    Oh btw,the AV manager is a forme r protege of the MU boss. He could ,no doubt,try to derail the gunners push for 3rd place. You never know.

  9. Oops, I am referring to it being Jelavic being in an offside position and interfering with play on the Drenthe goal.

  10. I agree with the other commenters on the offside. The ball wa launched over the top and Jelavic and Drenthe both ran toward the keeper, the former from an Offside position, the latter inside. To anyone watching it looked as if Drenthe would run at goal and then lay it off to Jelavic. Even if Drenthe didn’t pass it to Jelavic knowing he was offside, Jelavic was still very much active in the attacking move. The linesman had given offside before the shot, I thought, and Chez was subsequently half hearted on trying to save it. The way I saw it it was perfectly correct to flag for offside. Can you clarify if I/we are misunderstanding the rules here, Walter?

  11. For me the position of Jelavic was irrelevant because Drenthe took the shot himself and Drenthe was on side. So Jelavic was not directly interfering with the game.

  13. IMHO (and I’m no ref), Jelavic’s offside position caused both Szczesny and our CBs to shade away from Drenthe, so that none was in position to make the interception. It’s a very generous interpretation of “interfering” with play, but Szczesny’s positioning is clearly based on both players, not just the one shooting.

    Also, I said this in the game thread, but failing to call and card fouls properly and increased diving go hand in hand. Offensive players will embellish and spin in midair even on light contact, because they feel it’s the only way they can attract the ref’s attention, even to genuine fouls.

  14. It’s quite interesting from the post from Legolas still trust Wenger. It says that Arsenal has won the most penalties in the past 10 seasons.

  16. Walter, if Jelavic was running and distracting the keeper, would he not then be offside, because he was interfering?

    If that is right, then there must be an increasing and decreasing line of “interference”, and that is a judgement. So isn’t the point that the linesman was not wrong in a yes/no situation, but rather it is an interpretation of interference.

  17. At the time I just felt on an instinctive level that both players were attacking goal and the keeper/defence were lining up to deal with two players not one. In my humble opinion, running to a position where you are ready to receive a ball is definitely influencing play, since any decent defender will be making contingency plans with their positioning….like having a decoy goalscorer, if that makes sense.

  18. Walter, Jelavic was almost eye to eye with the goalkeeper, and THAT is interfering with the course of ensuring action!

    The original pass was from Jelavic and Jelavic then ran into an offside position expecting to receive a return pass!

    The You tube extract is perfectly clear in Real Time excerpt. A very clear clip, of what can happen is one follows the ball, Jelavic to Osman (?) for Drenthe to run onto. Drenthe was onside but , Jelavic was clearly attracting the attention of the goalkeeper.

    The Arsenal won, so who cares?

  19. the laws guidlines stipulate that Jelavic is not active until the ball is in his zone of control, he was not between the keeper and the shot, so not interfering, thus it was a bad call by the Ref, who had a shocker again!! On this one we got lucky though.

  20. Judging offsides can be very difficult and this was such a case. If you stop the video, Drenthe looked about 1 yard onside when the pass was made, however 1/5 of a second after the pass was made, he looked 1 yard offside.

    This is very hard to judge at real time and if in doubt, a lot of linesmen would rather rule out a legitimate goal than allow an offside goal.

    People tend to remember illegitimate goals that are allowed far more than disallowed goals that were legitimate.

    Most of us remember the offside goal wrongly scored by Everton last season, but we tend to forget the legitimate goals Arsenal scored last season that were disallowed.

  21. A world class sprinter can move his entire body at about 12.5 m/s. I believe TV is still 24 frames per second, so we could expect a sprinter to move about 0.5m from one frame to the next. Which would be about 2 body thicknesses?

    I haven’t seen mention of software to do it, but a person could probably model how the torso and head moves from frame to frame. Trying to model how the arms or legs move from frame to frame would be more difficult. And this is just considering a person moving in nominally a straight line at full speed. If the player was standing or jogging, in one frame, to model frame to frame would be easier for the torso and head. The modeling of what the arm or leg does can still be difficult.

    Unless TV ups the frame rate, the job of any reviewer is difficult.

    Back when I did some officiating, I much preferred being a linesman than being in the middle. I probably wasn’t as useful on calling fouls as I could have been, but I was good at offsides.

    The being in an offside position and interfering with play was fairly new then. There was not a lot of guidance as to how to call that.

  22. We had 8 shots on goal in the first 20 minutes-5 were good chances and we were all over Everton-they in the shape of Pienaar and especially Cahill kicked their way back into this game courtesy of the referee. If they had been booked they certainly would have had to ease up on some of their challenges or would have seen red cards.

    The offside “goal” is no where near a clear cut mistake by the ref as Walter has claimed. Firstly Drenthe was never offside-but Jelavic was and if you watch in slo mo you can see that the ref blew before Drenthe shot. I don’t agree that Jelavic was not in the zone-standing as he was on his own in front of the goal when Drenthe shot-he must have been a factor in our keepers positioning.
    The challenge on Rosicky not given as a penalty was a far more clear cut mistake.

  23. The decision to rule out Evertons goal for offside was wrong, Drenthe was clearly onside. It’s a very rare species that though, the wrongly disallowed goal against Arsenal. Strangly, during the match both linesmen gave wrong offside decisions in Arsenals favour, could this be the first signs of mutiny? Nah

    Although Lee Mason’s poor performance merely confirmed what we already knew, Mason is still a fully fledged member of “The Club”.

  24. The offside rule has traditionally been vague, and I agree with what some of you have posted in that how could anyone say that Jalevic wasn’t gaining an advantage by being in the offside position he was in.

    However, the rule book has some offside/not offside diagrams in the rule book. One of them has an example of something similar to the positioning of the disallowed goal by Everton, and it says to disregard Jelavic as he is not attempting to play the ball, and thus it should have been ruled onside.

  26. A good article, i don’t know why the media focused on how the refs didn’t count Everton offside goal & say Lee Mason the ref was with Arsenal !!!!
    Lee Mason was the ref last year when he gave them an offside goal when Saha scored their only goal last year at Emirates stadium, so it should be equal ” correcting his mistake” also he didn’t give Arsenal a true penalty kick !!!
    I don’t know why the ref didn’t give Cahill a 2nd yellow card so that he can send him off.
    ALSO i found interesting points happened to Arsenal last 2 matches if an opposition player stepped on Arsenal players ref will give a foul for them not for Arsenal ” happend with Tiote & Song ” also Song with Piennar “

  27. One big decision in a hundred accidentally given in Arsenal’s favour. Perhaps that is what the PGMOL meant when they boasted that they get it right 99% of the time. The simplest explanation that fits all the facts is usually the right answer.

  28. @Ref Reviewer 03
    What does ” OTHER Cahill Arteta NC Not much wrong with this one 2″ actually mean please? Poor old Mason…he has enough problems for decisions not directly his fault. Fair enough, he and the linesmen are a team, but it always strikes me as a bit unfair when the ref gets hammered, often for a maximum 3, because his linesman has cocked up.

  29. and not surprising that MOTD didn’t show the Rosicky’s penalty incident, but they talked a lot about Drenthe’s ruled out goal. But I did enjoy looking at Hansen’s face when they’re reviewing QPR v Livpool’s game.

    COYG

  30. @Gf60 – I wasn’t the reviewer for this match, but it seems the reviewer felt that there wasn’t much of a foul by Cahill on Arteta and therefore the ref made a mistake by giving Arsenal a free kick.

    When I was watching the match, I didn’t expect the ref to give the foul because he hadn’t been giving anything to Arsenal all night. However, perhaps Arteta being ex-Everton had something to do with it. I do feel personally that Cahill did pull back on Arteta’s arm and it was a foul.

    Looking over the entries above, excluding the errors by the linesmen, i.e. offsides, I would argue that Lee Mason did not make one wrong call against Everton and at the same time made 17 wrong calls against Arsenal including denying a strong penalty appeal by Rosicky.

    What is an injustice is that people who watch MOTD, including the people at DebatableDecisions, will think that Everton were cheated in this match by Lee Mason when it wasn’t the case at all.

  31. @Anne

    Interesting link. Clearly John Flynn does not abide by the rule of Riley.

    The very same linesman, John Flynn, was demoted after he gave Newcastle that debatable penalty at Old Trafford against Man Utd in November.

    Mutiny?

  32. Not on this game, but I’ve seen a second yellow listed as a 2 point weight, and as a 3 point weight. Is one a misprint?

  33. @Gord – If the ref doesn’t actually book a player on the pitch, then it’s hard to say that he should be sent off for what would be two yellow card offenses when he hasn’t officially been cautioned by the ref.

    We give yellow card decisions 2 points. If you saw a review with a yellow weighted as 3 points it was probably because he was already officially on a yellow card at the time of the offense.

  34. @Gord – If the ref doesn’t actually book a player on the pitch, then it’s hard to say that he should be sent off for what would be two yellow card offenses when he hasn’t officially been cautioned by the ref.

    We give yellow card decisions 2 points. If you saw a review with a yellow weighted as 3 points it was probably because he was already officially on a yellow card at the time of the offense.

  35. Two different incidents, both labelled as YELLOW/RED (and described as second yellow). One has 2 points, one has 3 points. Where I noticed this is 14970, Tottenham vs Liverpool. One at 28 minutes, other at 63 minutes.

  36. @Gord, In that review the column for possible weighted points is not included in order to save space.

    What I think happened there is that the reviewer thought the sending off was a bit harsh and therefore the reviewer probably gave 2 out of 3 points to the ref instead of the full 3.

    The reviewer likely scored Adam’s Yellow/Red as
    Correct – a bit Harsh – 1 point, 2 points out of possible 3 points (this last part is not being shown)

  39. Damien Luu,
    Sorry I missed your comment at 5:04. The counter-media war is on. Really glad we’re in sync on this! 🙂

  40. @Any reviewers home?

    Gord on followup again. 15266 Stoke versus ManU, goal at 52 minutes. Weighting is 2, not 3.

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