Crystal Palace v Arsenal Sunday 16 August 2015 – The Match Officials
by Andrew Crawshaw
- Referee – Lee Mason
- Assistants – S Ledger and E Smart
- Fourth Official – R Madley
Last week we had the referee with the worst competence scores from last season, this week we have Lee Mason who, whilst not a paragon of virtue, recorded the highest overall competence value (NB this table does not put weight on the decisions)
| Referee | Correct total | Wrong total |
| Lee Mason | 86.44% | 13.56% |
| Moss | 83.17% | 16.83% |
| Pawson | 80.82% | 19.18% |
| Clattenberg | 78.85% | 21.15% |
| Oliver | 78.18% | 21.82% |
| Dowd | 73.44% | 26.56% |
| Taylor | 72.88% | 27.12% |
| Friend | 70.59% | 29.41% |
| Marinner | 70.42% | 29.58% |
| Jones | 70.00% | 30.00% |
| East | 67.92% | 32.08% |
| Dean | 67.37% | 32.63% |
| Atkinson | 66.47% | 33.53% |
Last season he was in charge of two games for us, one at home and one away – exactly as it should be. The figures in the table above only reflect his performance in the home game v Newcastle as Walter was unable to do a review of our away game at Hull. I’m sure readers who were at the Hull Game will be able to add any thoughts on his performance in that game via the comments.
| Ref Review Arsenal – Newcastle |
Not bad overall scores but there were certainly some controversial decisions. Minute 6 Tiote kicks Alexis in the chest, referee poorly positioned should have been a red card, Minute 15 Wellbeck had a goal ruled out for a foul that our reviewer couldn’t see – no foul so goal should have stood, in Minute 38 Alexis puts himself between the ball and the Dummet who barges into the back of him in the penalty area. The foul was clearly indicated by the linesman. Mason puts the ball down for a free kick outside the penalty area.
In the second half The next controversial decision was in the lead up to the Newcastle goal, again Mr Mason was in a dreadful position yet somehow managed to call a minor foul from Giroud on Colback (your guess is as good as mine as to how he saw that one) It was a minor foul but the referee can’t call it if he hasn’t seen it!. Dummet should have been given a second yellow card in Min 87 for a ‘professional’ foul on Wellbeck (the penalty was given).
Overall there were only 8 wrong calls in the whole game which was good, unfortunately 6 of them were important and all of those were in favour of Newcastle so not so good from that point of view.
Hull 1 Arsenal 3 – 4 May – No full referee review but here is Walter’s post game piece.
Hull – Arsenal 1-3, yes it happened again! Sounds like a typical piece of one sided refereeing from Mason, every Arsenal foul called but hull allowed to do pretty much what they wanted. Another not given penalty for Arsenal and the Hull game came from a non-given foul.
In 2013-14 we were refereed by Mr Mason on 4 occasions, all away from home. I can’t find the full ref reviews but have referenced the post-match reviews by Walter.
6 October – West Brom v Arsenal (1-1). here are links to two post-match pieces including a detailed analysis of a non-given penalty for a poor challenge on Wilshere by Mulumbu.
Arsenal – WBA, the told you so game : The Mulumbu – Wilshere incident: penalty or not? How the English media stands alone
30 November – Cardiff v Arsenal (0-3)
Cardiff 0 – Aaronsenal 3 – No mention of the referee in this report so I will assume he had a reasonable game.
28 January – Southampton v Arsenal (2-2)
Southampton 2 – Arsenal 2 – Mason as predicted yet again –
Another biased performance where the strictest interpretation of the laws was applied against Arsenal whilst Southampton were allowed pretty much carte-blance. Southampton’s first goal came from a free kick for an imaginary foul by Mertesacker (a bit like last Sunday in fact, find an excuse to give Arsenal’s opponents a free kick in a dangerous area) to add insult to injury Fonte was using Monreal as a ladder to make his header, this of course is perfectly within the laws of the game as practiced by the PGMO.
11 May – Norwich v Arsenal (0-2)
Norwich – Arsenal, what a pair of goals! – another report that dosen’t mention the ref so an OK performance.
2012/13 – Going back a further season there were two games, again both away
Match Review: Lee Mason – Stoke City Vs Arsenal (0 – 0) [26/08/2012]
80% overall score (weighted) bias against Arsenal 78%. 3 penalty decisions to make – all wrong, 2 red cards both wrong, match was goal less. Minute7 Wilkinson stopped a goalbound shot with an outstretched arm, penalty for Arsenal not given and Wilkinson should have been dismissed as he was the last defender. In Min38 there was a second incorrectly denied penalty for Arsenal. In Minute57 Gibbs should have been penalised for a push in the penalty area, non given penalty to Stoke. Minute52 Wilkinson was penalised and given a yellow card for a studs up challenge – should have been a straight red card (his second of the match).
Difficult to see that in any way other than Mr Mason denying Arsenal a win and three points. Stoke should have been both a man and a goal down in the 7th minute.
Match Review: Lee Mason – Aston Villa Vs Arsenal (0 – 0) [24/11/2012]
92% overall score (weighted), 11 wrong decisions all against Arsenal. A great first half with only one wrong offside decision against Gibbs,. only 5 fouls committed all called correctly and El Ahmadi rightly given a yellow card for a dive. In the second half his numbers weren’t quite so good but he really didn’t miss anything potentially game changing.
Conclusions
- Mr Mason is a referee we normally get away from home (1 home game and now 7 away games since the start of the 2012 season)
- His competence numbers are usually high but his judgement on Important Decisions (second yellow cards, red cards, penalties and goals) is nowhere near as good. He is another referee who seems incapable of recognising a really bad challenge when one is made in front of his nose and another referee where I will be glad when the game is over and we have no serious injuries.
- Mr Mason can, on occasions be OK as a referee. Unfortunately all too frequently he follows the lead of his bosses at the PGMO and exhibits a terrible anti-Arsenal bias, particularly with Important Decisions.
- Don’t expect to see an Arsenal Penalty.
- Don’t expect to see Crystal Palace players given yellow cards yet alone red.
- Do look out for a phantom foul called on Arsenal in a position where Palace can cross the ball into our area and then look out for non called fouls on our defenders. His other favourite trick is to ignore a foul by a palace player in a dangerous position.
- As with all referees out players will be given yellow cards at the earliest possible opportunity.
- Mr Mason is a typical PGMO employee, rabidly anti-Arsenal and capable of just about anything.
Anniversary of the day…
14 August 1996. The first Arsène Wenger signings, Remi Garde (on a free transfer) and Patrick Vieira (£3.5m) joined Arsenal. Wenger was still in Japan ending his contract and both players arrived carrying injuries.
FFS….one after another…..someone wants to delay our start to the season!
The problem is that almost all the referees have a flawed history with us. Looking at the list, I would positively choose the following (in sequence). I have mastered all the minutiae of the scoring and reporting over the last few years so please shout if I have forgotten some glaring injustice…
Clattenburg – think he is clearly the best.
Oliver – much improved, more confident and seemingly happier to make impartial decisions even if it annoys the entrenched interests (e.g. di Maria red against us last season and Courtois red against Chelsea last weekend).
Moss – we have an excellent record under him, although always unnerved by the FiF allegations surrounding him.
Tough after that…
Mason you’ve dealt with (and can’t forgive the Everton offside goal from a couple of years ago).
Pawson I can’t recollect much about, Taylor is a nightmare but possibly slightly technically better (although still terribly biased).
Dean has shown signs of improvement in terms of bias – but he seems to have drifted away from the elite so maybe doesn’t care as much any more,
Dowd I can’t forgive for the display at Newcastle in the 4-4 but otherwise hasn’t been that bad.
Marriner I used to think was OK but is just incompetent – the red card at Chelsea in the disaster shows that.
The others the less said about the better. What a motley bunch!
Sorry – I have NOT mastered all the minutiae! Although do read all the reports, previews and summaries.
The quality and quantity of the work carried out by everyone over the years is astounding. Keep it up!
Pete
Agree. Wish we could have clatternburg for all our matches, he is the least controversial of the lot. Perhaps that might also explain why he may have fallen down the pecking order in the pgmob ranks – he’s not as biased enough as he’s supposed to be.
Other nightmares to add to the list;
Michael Jones – who could forget the freekick he awarded to Stoke after Giroud got stamped on by not one but two stoke thugs.
Probert – Sending Wenger into the stands at OT and that game v Wigan
Did I mention Atkinson, the biggest tw*t of them all?
Can’t believe the ref is being called out even before the game. It gives us an excuse before we even start.
I’m more concerned about who plays and what formation we use. It was all wrong last week. We need to have a solid defensive performance eliminating mistakes. Simply it’s a must win game. It get’s our season started, keeps us in the title race and keeps the media off our backs. Because we have failed to strengthen, which imo we should have, the knives are already out.
“The buck stops here ” great line from President Truman .
Nowadays everyone likes to blame someone else…. Shame !
The ref gets called out coz we know exactly what he will do. He’s not being called out for our poor performance last week, but for his diabolical performances whenever he’s done matches involving us as demonstrated in this article.
Tunnygriff, hope the ref is not a major part of this game, but the huge volume of research on this site has many times resulted in some uncannily accurate ref previews.
Hope wenger was watching tonight. That’s how you win games.
I have seen nothing since the Dutchmans arrival to suggest Wenger needs to learn anything whatsoever from Van Gaals Utd, except perhaps a masterclass in wasting money
Mandy,United are playing average and still getting results, which is a excellent sign.
Let’s see how the mighty palace hold us on Sunday.
Laen- Wenger was in St Tropez getting some sun. Hope you learnt something watching tonight. Bayern Munchen scored 5 & their referee does not belong to a corrupt sewer like PGMO.
Menace, get over this fascinating with the ref. West ham loss had nothing to do with the ref, unless you have suspicions on conspiracy theory.
Mandy in reply to your earlier post in the other article, if you believe that wenger has done the best job possible with what he has been given then you are by far in the minority. multiple heavy loses year after year, Money wasted on players, Managed to set mindset that 4th is good enough, No CL progression in almost a decade. I dont hate Wenger, never have and never will but he is at fault for all shortfalls, money isnt. whether you like it or not he had money to spend its irrelvent if that money came from player sales or not. He used what was given to him poorly. His loyalty to very mediocre players has cost us points, places and cups. We lost against west ham, not because of players we hadnt signed yet, or lack of funds, or injuries but because wenger was completely wrong in the way team was set up. This is the first time its happened either we have seen this continuously for the last 10 years.
Hurray, we found the replacement of Wenger!
All teams will lose games Laen.
Agree, fourth is no longer good enough, hence third and a couple FA Cups, that is progress.
The loss to West Ham will be put in context as the season progresses, one of the main players at fault in that game has been an ECL winner and far beyond an average player.
None of us have any real idea what has been given to Wenger, and with a man of his class, I suspect we never will. As for what you term mediocre players, it was impossible for him to pick off the very top players during the years when the media, and some of the fanbase were going for the club with all they had, the years when we were losing our best players and finding it very difficult to replace them. The top players went to those with the resources, not always a club stuck in a negative transfer spend ….but Wenger didn’t do too bad with those he developed. For what it’s worth, I do think Wenger could have been perhaps given a bit more help, but that controversial standpoint comes from no knowledge at all as to what goes on at the club. And I am not sure he asked or expected more help when keeping us in the lucrative ECL during the years of austerity.
I am glad you don’t hate Wenger, so why not give him your support?
As for Utd, winning when not playing well, that will catch up on them.
Some of the comments are crappy verbal diarrhoea ,but funny , just like this clip.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkId_c_dVfA
Shoot I rather think this is because very few people have absolute power any more. Certainly Truman’s view would be false these days – Congress regularly over rides the wishes of the president. Personally I am not at all in favour of absolute power, but I guess some people still like it.