by Andrew Crawshaw
Following Walter’s review of Mike Jones in the Leicester game Ref Review : Arsenal – Leicester here is the updated table of shame
| Wrong Important Decisions | Favouring Arsenal | Favouring Opponents |
| 2nd Yellow Cards | 0 | 17 |
| Red Cards | 3 | 14 |
| Penalties | 3 | 15 |
| Goals | 1 | 6 |
| Total | 7 | 52 |
| Possible Cost in Points | 2 | 23 |
A very poor performance from Mr Jones 54% overall weighted, bias against both teams 10/90 and three wrong Important Decisions (second yellow, red cards, penalties and goals) with decision becoming increasingly bizarre as the game progressed. Leicester players not being punished for obvious infringements, Upson should have had his second yellow card in Minute 28, for a two footed frontal tackle on Alexis (not even called a foul), in Minute 45 Simpson got away with the most blatant handball in the penalty area you will ever see (penalty and booking – neither given) and in Minute 88 Simpson should have been sent off for two yellows when he eventually got his first. In the last few minutes Giroud was called for handball when none of the officials could possibly have seen the offence (it hit his chest!) and was then booked when walking away from the Leicester keeper who kicked the ball at his back -wierd!
On to West Ham
Referee – Chris Foy
Assistants – A Garratt and D Bryan
Fourth Official – A Taylor
Chris Foy is one of the older referees at 53, his home FA is Liverpool. He has officiated in 258 games, issuing 38 red and 705 yellow cards, both of these card numbers are below the all referee average, possibly indicating a tendency to be lenient on the discipline front..
2014-15 Season
| Ref Review : WBA – Arsenal. Biased by circumstance more than by nature |
70% Overall weighted, bias against both teams 22/78 and one wrong Important Decision when in Min 23 Lumumba fouled Giroud in the penalty area and the referee literally looked the other way. That miss was his only mistake of the first half where he had next to nothing to do but with a trip and legs being tangled up there can be no excuse for both Foy and his linesman to miss it. In the second half he was much poorer missing a succession of decisions mostly in WBA favour. As Foy is a noted ‘home’ referee this kind of bias is pretty much in line with our expectations.
West Ham v Spurs in week 1 0 – 1
West Ham v Swansea in week 15 3 – 1
Mr Garratt has something of a regular with Mr Foy in recent weeks, he also was with Mr Friend at the Everton away game where he made a complete cock-up of a number of decisions costing us points. One of our regular writer of comments – bjtgooner – has also flagged him at fault for not spotting the ‘hand of Vidic’ incident Vidic Handball Against Arsenal – YouTube . I just hope he is on better form on Saturday. Mr Bryan is a new partner for Mr Foy but has appeared in Arsenal games with Mr Taylor and Craig Pawson, he has a health warning from the Burnley game when one of the assistants (I don’t know which of Bryan or Eaton) missed a clear handball from Boyd on an Arsenal corner, clear not-given penalty . Mr Taylor we all know and love.
2013-14 Season
We only had him once for the away game to Crystal Palace on 26 October a game which we won two nil. Gnabry, Monreal, Jack, Özil. Hail the heroes from the game at Palace Arteta being sent off for a needless last man challenge on Chamakh only just in our half. Typical home ref decision.
West Ham also had one game – their three nil loss away at Chelsea.
2012-13 Season – four Arsenal and two West Ham games
Match Review: Chris Foy – Arsenal Vs Sunderland (0 – 0) [18/08/2012]
74% overall, bias against 92/8 and no wrong Important Decisions
Match Review: Chris Foy – Arsenal Vs Newcastle United (7 – 3) [29/12/2012]
29 Dec Arsenal v Newcastle (7 – 3) 90% overall performance, bias against 100/0 but really only three wrong decision so this figure is essentially meaningless. no wrong Important Decisions. An excellent piece of refereeing in a crazy match.
Match Review: Chris Foy – Arsenal Vs Stoke City (1 – 0) [02/02/2013]
63% overall, bias against 78/22 and three wrong Important Decisions. In Minute 76 Wilkinson should be sent off for his second (at least) yellow card offence, Min 88 Shawcross should be off for a tackle to Kos’s nuts. Min 91 Owen should be sent off for an attempted punch on Arteta (luckily the silly pratt missed but should still have been off)
Match Review: Chris Foy – Arsenal Vs Reading (4 – 1) [30/03/2013]
67% overall, bias against 72/28 and four wrong Important Decisions. Minute 17 Giroud is bundled over by the keeper in the penalty area after pushing the ball past him and trying to follow it. Clear penalty and red card – neither given. Minute 76 Arsenal wrongly get penalty for a foul inches outside the area which Arteta scores. This (kind of balanced out the incident in Minute 18 but both were wrong so ‘nul points’ to the referee).
| Match Review: Chris Foy – West Ham United Vs Stoke City (1 – 1) [19/11/2012] |
77% overall, bias against 46/54 – about as even as you could wish for but note the difference with our home game against the same opponents!
| Match Review: Chris Foy – Norwich City Vs West Ham United (0 – 0) [15/09/2012] |
66% overall, bias against 67/33 and one wrong Important Decision when Norwich was given a free kick just outside the penalty area – the foul was on the line and it should have been a penalty.
In Summary
- His basic tendency is to favour the home team in his decision making, however that doesn’t necessarily happen in Arsenal games
- His overall numbers indicate that he is lenient in judging yellow and red card offences in comparison with the all-referee averages. 0.15 red and 2.73 yellow cards per game against the average of 0.176 and 3.306. His strike rate for yellow cards is the lowest of all current referees. Not a referee who I would wish to be in charge against overly physical teams but that shouldn’t be a problem this weekend.
- He tends to ‘bottle’ penalty decisions, preferring not to have to give them and his judgement is often suspect in those he does actually award.
- In my opinion, his age is starting to show and his performances are starting to suffer as a result. I know a lot of mature runners are quite capable of putting in the necessary mileage involved in a football match but there are very few capable of matching the pace of the much younger players.
- On a good day he can be very good but, for Arsenal, they are relatively few and far between, tho only one I have referenced in the last three years was the Newcastle game from 2012/13. Since then he has been mediocre at best.
- A final word about the two assistants, I have warning flags against both of them. Neither seem capable of spotting handballs and Mr Garratt also has problems with goals scored from offside positions, all against Arsenal.
- The supporters will have to be in good voice and call out all of the officials when they make errors, deliberate or accidental. Writing in advance the lineup of Officials has the appearance of a ‘perfect storm’.COYG
Foy at home is usually not really a disaster. The supporters in the stadium have to make sure Foy hears them.
Let’s not over bother ourselves on any aging refereeing by Ref Chris Foy. I am sure he will do his match officiating according to the rules of d game tomorrow at the Emirates stadiun. That said, I want to use this website of the Untold to advice the boss to, from Arsenal hotel, leave with the Gunners straight to Monaco. For security reason, no Gunner should be allowed time to go to his house after they ‘ve beaten the West Hammers. Going back to their houses could lead them to have passion with their partners. And having such will surely affect their focus, mental balance, compossure, cohesion and physical strength with their Monaco game just 2 days after playing against the WH. Ahead of the Monaco game, the boss has agreed to do 2 to 3 rotations for d West Ham game. I call it tactical rotation for d Monaco game in mind. For the West Ham game, MY TACTICAL GUNNERS STARTS: Szczesny. ChambersMonrealKoscielnyGibbs. CoqulineRamsey. WalcottGiroudOzilSanchez. My Sub: MartinezWelbeckRhinoCazorlaBellerinRosickyFlamini.
Samuel – I’m not sure confining them to a hotel would necessarily help – not in Giroud’s case anyway… 😉
For the team, I would like to see some serious rotation ahead of Monaco. How about:
Ospina
Chambers, Mert, Kos, Gibbs
Flamini, Ramsey, Rosicky
Walcott, Giroud, Welbeck.
Bellerin, Monreal, Coquelin, Ozil, Alexis, Szcz and Santi on the bench. However, I would dearly like Akpom to be involved so we can give him some game time if we’re winning comfortably – Ozil and Alexis if we’re not. Perhaps confine Bellerin to the stands as Coquelin could play right back?
Well done Tony.
I see you’ve been cited on Arsenal.com again in the ‘best of the blogs’ section referencing your piece about the new records Arsenal have set in the FA Cup.
Congrats.
On the topic of Monaco, I see that the next opponent Monaco has in their league, has just been hit by 3 injuries.
Gord
They had a few at the Em’s and it didn’t affect them too badly.
Lets hope this means they are down to there last 8 players. 🙂
I think you read that wrong Jambug, sorry. The team Monaco is playing agaisnt (Bastia) got 3 injuries this week, so Monaco may have an easier game than expected.
Mind you, a West Ham player cut his toe with a tea cup, so we got a break. 🙂
And one of their players got a dislocated shoulder like Debuchy. When did that happen? Same player that did Debuchy?
Gord
Ahh, I see.
Ok, so it looks like we’ll be facing 11 men then. 😮
I think Arsene Wenger said in his press conference that he generally changes two or three players per match to allow rest and recovery, but not more than that because he does not want to upset the balance of the team.
Very pleased to see our captain Mikel Arteta is back in training. But the boss says he won’t play for three weeks or so.
In the press conference one of the best bits is the questions from a journalist from Chile, particularly when he says how impressed everyone in Chile is with the number of goals Alexis Sanchez has scored for Arsenal, a lot more than in his previous career. Arsene Wenger answers modestly of course while giving some interesting information about what may be playing a part.
Foy seems typical of the PGMO i.e. incompetent and probably biased. Garrett has been a total disaster. Lets hope the home fans get on their case early – and often – and very loudly!
OT: Alexis, and where he calls home
A long time ago, I ran across one particular definition of a desert: a place that receives less than 12 inches of precipitation per year. And where I went to high school, gets about 16 inches. But in general, all life on the Great Plains of North America are limited by water. We get enough, to produce significant exports of food.
Where Alexis is from, sees average precipitation of 3mm per year (less than 1% of the precipitation we had in Dawson Creek, BC, Canada). This is the environment of the Atacama desert, which is inland a little. To me, it is surprising that a coastal city windward of a tall mountain chain, gets no water.
Alexis has played Sanata Claus for his home in the past. Coming to Arsenal has probably changed that. To me, the gift the people of his city really need is water. So, today I looked a little into desalination plants. There is one in Chile, at the southern boundary of the Atacama (Tocopilla, where Alexis is from, is near the northern boundary) at Copiapó. It was built to support an iron mine. Project Budget comes to a total US$143 million. Capacity: 54.000 m3/d (17 million liters/day).
Apparently there has been some “talk” of building a thorium fueled nuclear reactor in Chile for desalination.
Football players make a lot of money, but obviously a desalination plant is not on his shopping list.
I read an article a while (months) ago, which talked about graphene. I believe someone had made a graphene membrane that was porous to water, but was not for helium. That sort of thing could result in practical desalination for a football player wanting to help his city, but is probably 10 years away from realisation.
OT: More about Alexis
Not a profound article, but people in South America want to know.
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=2378439&CategoryId=13002
This is a newspaper out of Venezuala.
Again , hoping for more of the same . 2 goals and a clean sheet and all our players save and sound .
Go get ’em guys !
Up the Gunners !
Gord
Thanks for the link. Nice little piece.
They should be proud. His attitude does himself and his Country credit.