From premierleague.com here are this weekend’s matches:-
Saturday 3 November
12:30 AFC Bournemouth v Man Utd
Referee: Paul Tierney
Assistants: Constantine Hatzidakis, Darren Cann
Fourth official: Kevin Friend
15:00 Cardiff City v Leicester City
Referee: Lee Probert
Assistants: Simon Beck, Andy Garratt
Fourth official: Andy Madley
Referee: David Coote
Assistants: Peter Kirkup, Mick McDonough
Fourth official: Martin Atkinson
Referee: Craig Pawson
Assistants: Lee Betts, Ian Hussin
Fourth official: Anthony Taylor
Referee: Roger East
Assistants: Matthew Wilkes, Derek Eaton
Fourth official: Stuart Attwell
17:30 Arsenal v Liverpool
Referee: Andre Marriner
Assistants: Scott Ledger, Simon Long
Fourth official: Michael Oliver
19:45 Wolves v Spurs
Referee: Mike Dean
Assistants: Dan Robathan, Mark Scholes
Fourth official: Jonathan Moss
Sunday 4 November
15:00 Man City v Southampton
Referee: Lee Mason
Assistants: Marc Perry, Neil Davies
Fourth official: Chris Kavanagh
16:00 Chelsea v Crystal Palace
Referee: Michael Oliver
Assistants: Stuart Burt, Simon Bennett
Fourth official: Kevin Friend
Monday 5 November
20:00 Huddersfield Town v Fulham
Referee: Anthony Taylor
Assistants: Gary Beswick, Adam Nunn
Fourth official: Jonathan Moss
Crystal Palace join the clubs having a referee for the third time as they have Michael Oliver for the away game at Chelsea.
David Coote gets his third PL game as he is entrusted with Everton v Brighton, after his performance in our Carabao Cup match on Wednesday it will be interesting to see what he considers worthy of a yellow card in a League game or indeed if he can tell the difference between a corner and a goal kick (hint – if the ball deflects from its original trajectory after hitting a defensive player its a corner!).
Those of us at the Ems on Wednesday evening probably doubt his competence at this level. A lot of his decisions were wrong or downright strange.
Anthony Taylor is now the only referee with 11 matches in the 11 weeks of the PL as Martin Atkinson finally gets to put his whistle down for a week. Simon Bennett and Gary Beswick have both had 11 games running the lines.
Crystal Palace are now top of the fouls made table with 133, Everton and Arsenal have 128, Man United 127. At the other end of the table Man City have fewest overall fouls on 88, Chelsea have 95. The Median number of fouls is 110 (although no team actually has 110 – Spurs have 111 and Cardiff have 109).
The yellow cards for Man City still look odd – at home they have committed 39 fouls for 2 yellow cards, away they have 49 fouls for 10 cards.
The time played under caution (minutes with players on yellow cards or red cards, or following penalty goals) also looks odd :-
| Playing at Home | Away from Home | Total minutes | |
| Liverpool | 83 | 206 | 289 |
| Wolverhampton | 232 | 72 | 304 |
| Newcastle | 100 | 303 | 403 |
| Chelsea | 208 | 203 | 411 |
| Cardiff | 228 | 198 | 426 |
| Bournemouth | 267 | 212 | 479 |
| Man City | 98 | 436 | 534 |
| Huddersfield | 310 | 313 | 623 |
| Tottenham | 138 | 566 | 704 |
| Everton | 210 | 544 | 754 |
| Brighton | 450 | 321 | 771 |
| Burnley | 348 | 438 | 786 |
| West Ham | 396 | 419 | 815 |
| Crystal Palace | 464 | 358 | 822 |
| Southampton | 333 | 492 | 825 |
| Arsenal | 438 | 410 | 848 |
| Watford | 708 | 173 | 881 |
| Fulham | 576 | 332 | 908 |
| Man United | 429 | 486 | 915 |
| Leicester | 442 | 494 | 936 |
I have highlighted the obvious figures that stand out – blue for those that seem low and yellow for those that are high.
Liverpool and Wolverhampton have been least affected by cards or penalties this season, whilst Leicester, Man United and Fulham have had to play for three times as long. Watford are the highest penalised home team with Liverpool the least.
Away from home Wolverhampton are absolure saints whilst Everton and Tottenham are sinners, although Spurs split between home and away games may well be skewing their results.
Man City suffer from far more away from home than they do at the Ethihad (436/98), For Spurs the ratio is similar (566/138), Liverpool are twice as likely to suffer away from home (206/83), Chelsea Arsenal and Man United are more or less equally treated (203/208, 410/438 and 486/429).
Finally on to our game on Saturday evening. Our officials are :-
- Referee: Andre Marriner
Assistants: Scott Ledger, Simon Long
Fourth official: Michael Oliver
Our first time this year for Mr Mariner, the second time for Liverpool who was in charge for their one-all draw away to Chelsea at the end of September. Historically Mr Marriner hasn’t been one of our bogey referees but our ability to win with him in charge took a dive last year as we lost away at Stoke and at home to both Manchester Clubs. Suffice it to say that he is unlikely to tilt the pitch in our favour. A game we all approach with some trepidadation.
COYG
I am using a different definition of caution, which includes the issuing of penalties. But somehow your numbers are bigger than mine, which shouldn’t be true.
But, in my data there is a big gap from 539 to 710. And what is the average amount of caution? Why 625, right in the middle of this gap. There are 11 teams above the gap and 9 teams below. Only two of the Top-6 in the high group (Arsenal and ManU). It looks like it is 2 different distributions of caution combined; one with an average caution of 424 and the other with an average caution of 789. The median is 714, with a MAD of 156.
Let’s split it into 2 groups. The median of the low group is at 428 (MAD of 48) and the median of the high group is 807 (MAD of 45).
To me, it seems more reasonable that we have two groups of teams with about the same MAD (or standard deviation/variance), as it is a group of officials managed by the 😈 Mike Riley handing out the caution. For some reason, the rest-of-the-pack group here are not getting much caution, and PGMO are adjusting how they manage Liverpool!, Chel$ea, Man$ity and the spuds so that these teams appear to be one group.
The low group is:
.1. Liverpool (287), Chel$ea (428), Spuds (461), Man$ity (534).
.2. Wolves (297), Cardiff (396), Newcastle (399), Bournemouth (534) and Huddersfield (539).
I don’t see any geographic pattern to these 5 rest-of-the-pack teams in the low group.
Wolves: Nuno Santo – former goalkeeper who has managed Rio Ave, Valencia and Porto.
Cardiff: Neil Warnock – former winger, who has managed a pile of teams and been a muppet on TV.
Newcastle: Rafael Benitez – former defender who started coaching at age 26 for a pile of teams.
Bournemouth: Eddie Howe – former defenderin second stint with Bournemouth (managed Burnley for a season).
Huddersfield: David Wagner – former striker who managed Dortmund before Huddersfield.
The high group is:
.1. ManU (807) and Arsenal (737).
.2. State Aid (710), CPalace (718), Brighton (718), Leicester (785), Burnley (810), Watford (811), Everton (833), Southampton (852) and Fulham (895).
I think I need to go through my data and fix the errors. But the caution data looks cooked to me. That the MAD for the two groups is substantially the same looks odd.
Slightly out of point. I read from the club’s website that M. Guendouzi is suspended for the Liverpool game following his red card from the Blackpool game in the league cup. How is this possible with the recently amended rules of players serving a caution only for the competition where its committed.
Looking at the officials, there is a good chance of Spuds being given a pen for the divers as the dancer is in charge of the whistle. Tubby is the fourth official & has no vision beyond 2 meters due to short memory. So anyone wanting to make a few pennies can stake on a Spud penalty.
Tony Justin – yes it beats me too.
With respect to Wolves, Cardiff, Newcastle, … having low amounts of caution handed out to them; it could just be an accident of statistics.
At the beginning of the season, they just happened to play a couple of games where they got little caution. But 😈 Mike Riley knows that to only hand out low caution to the “chosen ones” would look suspicious. So, once those teams had “established” low caution (by accident), PGMO are making sure they continue to have low caution so that they can continue to give low caution to their chosen ones.
Arsenal is in the high caution group, not because they are in need of caution, but since they have always been bashed they will continue to be bashed. And people seem to think that high numbers of fouls and cards equate to being dirty. And the medja keeps beating on the drum, “Arsenal are a dirty team”.
You cannot determine how dirty a team is, but the things the PGMO referees do. You have to look for dirty in other places. Which teams have opponents requiring lots of treatments. And especially lots of treatments where the player is off the pitch for an extended period of time, or the player has to be subbed off as they are unable to continue.
Marriner at our away match at Stoke…. with a least 3 clear penalties not given and if you want to put the dots on the i it was 4 not given. But as they say : it evens all out so we should get 3 or 4 doubtful penalties today. LOL
I think against United he also refused to give us a clear penalty if my memory serves me right.
I wonder when it will all even out …
Atkinson and Marriner.
It’s a one-two but unfortunately for English football not the type of combination that can win you a game of Association Football. Far from it…