Untold RefWatch – Everton v Arsenal; H. Webb. Oh dear!

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RefWatch – Everton v Arsenal – Sunday, 14/11/2010 (14:00)

By DogFace

• Referee:          Howard Webb
• Assistant 1:      Andy Madley
• Assistant 2:      David Richardson
• 4th Official:     Anthony Taylor

OK – so where do we start with Howard Webb… well (how about a bit of de-ja-vu) – If the PGMOB were a Masonic lodge with criminal tendencies…

Webb would be at the left hand of his worshipful master [Riley].

To clarify, Webb, like Dean, represents a lot of bad things about the game for me – he is cut from the same cloth as Dean and, in testament to the poor quality of his decision making process, I keep getting him confused with Graham Poll.  He IS the new Graham Poll – whilst researching for this article I actually spent around 15 minutes on Google trying to find the game where Howard Webb dished out three yellow cards to the same player… the transition between Poll and Webb was that seamless.  Shall we have a look at his profile?

Go on then:

• Full name:                   Howard Melton Webb
• Date of birth:               14 July 1971 (age 39)
• Place of birth:              Rotherham (South Yorkshire)
• Other occupation:       Police Sergeant

Oh my lordy; ‘Melton’!  Dean is a ‘Leslie’ and Webb is a ‘Melton’ – I’m starting to see a trend here… bullied at school perhaps?

“Shut it Melton Mowbray you pork pie munching t%@t!”

…was no doubt the cry in the playground… hang on pork, West Ham… pig – what did he do for a living again and why did I mention West Ham and not TottenHam?  Well, if you’ll bear with me; I’ll get to that in a minute or so.

Howard Webb (aged 13)

Howard Webb, as you are doubtlessly fully aware, is not without his share of controversy – we all watched the World cup final, so we all know just how incompetent a referee he can be when he really sets his mind to it.  In fact Webb is so prolific in the cock-up department that, like ‘his yang’ Dean, I have to boil it down to a set of relevant highlights.

As we know from the World Cup fiasco – Webb likes to dish out the cards… and did us all proud by setting a new record for the competition.  The most bookings that Howard Webb has ever made in any one game was in 2006, in the match between Fulham and Arsenal (in which Fulham won 2-1).  Webb also dished out 10 cards in the 2007 Carling Cup final between… oh – look at that, Chelsea and Arsenal (in which Chelsea won 2-1)… are we starting to see a pattern there?

During the Euro 2008 competition Webb made a wee blunder in awarding Poland an offside goal against the hosts [Austria] – despite Webb really hoping that they would get one back, they didn’t, so he had to invent a penalty… not entirely sure what the laws state on this but as I recall there was some minor tussling for position in the penalty area before a corner and, after a blue-sky match-fixing brainwave (I say ‘fixing’ because he was mending it… obviously), he theatrically wagged his finger at the bemused players (at this point I was frantically trying to log into betfair as I knew what was coming next).  Webby then looked over at the corner then turned with mock ‘not you again’ shock and blew up for a penalty.  Job done… and nobody would suspect a thing – well apart from the Polish Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, who publicly stated that he would like to murder him – I was just left cursing my slow internet connection.

Better get those fingers typing faster DogFace if you want to get that £50 down on the draw at 180/1!

In the 2008/2009 season Webb uncharacteristically but effectively ‘mugged’ Newcastle [against Fulham] into relegation by disallowing a goal by Mark Viduka.  Fulham saw European football while Sunderland (and Hull) stayed up, I mention this as it’s interesting to note when we crunch Webb’s numbers later.

On a plus point [of controversy], Howard Webb seems to support the use of video technology as in the Confederations Cup game between Brazil and Egypt Webb missed a handball in the area to deny a Brazilian goal and pointed to the corner spot.  He then prodded his ear-piece, went a bit quiet, scratched his chin, hoped nobody was paying much attention and then sent off Ahmed Al Muhamadi for a handball and awarded Brazil a last minute penalty giving them a 4-3 win.  Good Show PC Webb – that’s the kind of pro-active approach we need I reckon – more CCTV and less detective work!  FIFA (who usually are very open to the suggestion of using video technology) investigated him but for some reason [insert conspiracy theory here] gave him the world cup final anyway.

I would go on but most of the rest of his gaffes seem to revolve around him giving Manchester United penalties – which just depresses me slightly… and it’s late – so onto the numbers!

Walter taught me this pose in Belgium referee school – it means “I don’t care”!

I have talked a lot about the use of bookings in Howard Webb’s refereeing arsenal (geddit?); so it is worth studying his card table (For the EPL Teams with 5 games or less under Webb filtered out):

	Team	Matches	Bookings	Sent Off	Average
1	Sunderland	9	22	0	2.44
2	Chelsea	20	48	0	2.4
3	Arsenal	19	42	2	2.21
4	Middlesbrough	17	37	0	2.18
5	Blackburn Rovers	22	45	3	2.05
6	Manchester United	24	49	2	2.04
7	Birmingham City	11	22	0	2
8	Everton	20	35	0	1.75
9	Fulham	16	26	1	1.63
10	Newcastle United	22	34	1	1.55
11	Bolton Wanderers	18	27	0	1.5
12	West Ham United	14	21	2	1.5
13	Stoke City	9	13	0	1.44
14	Liverpool	23	32	1	1.39
15	Wigan Athletic	13	18	1	1.38
16	Manchester City	15	20	1	1.33
17	Reading	6	8	0	1.33
18	Portsmouth	13	17	0	1.31
19	Tottenham Hotspur	23	30	1	1.3
20	Aston Villa	17	21	0	1.24
21	Charlton Athletic	9	10	2	1.11
22	West Bromwich Albion	8	7	0	0.88

As you can see Arsenal and Chelsea rate fairly high with an average of 2.4 and 2.21 cards per game respectively (our most booked player by Webb was Fabregas with 5 cards).  Sunderland take the number one slot at 2.44, but amazingly Stoke are 13^th at 1.44!

But this is not the whole story – other than the inclusion of Sunderland you can see a north/south bias developing with Webb, on average, penalising the big London clubs more than the big North/West clubs.  It’s worth noting that these stats are readily available and used in the gambling fraternity when picking a winner.

Take your filthy, soft, shandy drinking hands off him son!

Now if we contrast and compare with Howard Webb’s personalised league table (new RefWatch feature – these stats you can get nowhere else; all competitions – teams with 10 games or less under Webb filtered out) – we can see this trend continue:

	Team	Matches	Average PPG	Wins	Draws	Losses
1	Manchester United	31	2.064516129	20	4	7
2	Liverpool	27	1.777777778	14	6	7
3	Sunderland	11	1.727272727	5	4	2
4	Stoke City	16	1.6875	7	6	3
5	West Ham United	21	1.666666667	11	2	8
6	Chelsea	24	1.666666667	11	7	6
7	Manchester City	20	1.55	9	4	7
8	Cardiff City	11	1.545454545	4	5	2
9	Tottenham Hotspur	25	1.52	10	8	7
10	Everton	22	1.454545455	8	8	6
11	Bolton Wanderers	23	1.391304348	8	8	7
12	Aston Villa	19	1.368421053	6	8	5
13	Arsenal	24	1.333333333	8	8	8
14	Wolverhampton Wanderers	11	1.272727273	4	2	5
15	Reading	12	1.25	5	0	7
16	Portsmouth	21	1.238095238	7	5	9
17	Fulham	18	1.222222222	6	4	8
18	Birmingham City	18	1.222222222	4	10	4
19	Middlesbrough	20	1.2	6	6	8
20	Wigan Athletic	21	1.19047619	7	4	10
21	Newcastle United	24	1.083333333	6	8	10
22	West Bromwich Albion	13	1	3	4	6
23	Burnley	11	1	2	5	4
24	Blackburn Rovers	25	0.96	6	6	13

But there is something odd here as this is the breakdown of average points received by teams under Howard Webb – so you would expect it to look something similar to the league table.  As we can see Sunderland and Stoke are in the top four!  And even worse, Arsenal languishes at number 13… whereas West Ham, as a London Club – seem to do very well indeed at number five – but that’s just the ‘lucky hammers’ for you I suppose!?

This raises further questions on the card situation and I will do some further research into exactly when, on average, in a match the cards for the higher ranked teams [in Webb’s personal league table] were dished out.  Also, Sunderland, despite being top of the card list have never had a sending off and only had the same player booked twice in 22 bookings.

A casual observer could easily assume from this that, with the ‘readily available’ booking figures being ‘out there’ as a yard-stick for bias, it might be easy to disguise a bias or indiscretion by ‘creating evidence’ if you were so inclined…

…do they teach that in basic training I wonder?

He can’t be all bad though as on Tuesday night he totally mugged Tottenham by denying a clear penalty on David Bentley and awarding him a yellow card for a dive (ho ho)… against Sunderland was it?  And they booed off their own players, talk about missing point – they’re worse than us in the ‘self harming’ stakes!

So where does that leave us with Everton Vs Arsenal… well – let’s have a look at our Home and Away form under Webb, on a more seasonal basis:

Arsenal at home with Webb at the whistle:

Season	Competition	Home win	Draw	Away win
2004/2005	English Premier	0	1	0
2005/2006	English Premier	0	1	0
2006/2007	English Premier	2	0	0
2007/2008	English League Cup	1	0	0
2007/2008	English Premier	0	1	0
2008/2009	English Premier	2	1	0
2009/2010	English Premier	1	0	0

Arsenal away with Webb at the whistle:

Season	Competition	Home win	Draw	Away win
2004/2005	English Premier	0	0	1
2005/2006	English League Cup	1	0	0
2005/2006	English Premier	1	0	0
2005/2006	FA Community Shield	1	0	0
2006/2007	English League Cup	1	0	0
2006/2007	English Premier	1	1	0
2007/2008	English League Cup	1	0	0
2007/2008	English Premier	2	1	0
2008/2009	English Premier	0	1	0
2009/2010	English Premier	0	1	1

As you can see; our home form under Webb remains relatively unchanged over the seasons – but our away form has improved a little of late – does this mean we are overdue a mugging?  And what position will we find ourselves in the Howard Webb card and league table come Monday?

Inquiring minds need to know!

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More eccentric than H.Webb, more topsy-turvey than H Webb’s decision making, more relativistic than H. Webb.  It is of course “Making the Arsenal” – the eternally eternal Christmas present for every lover of Arsenal, untold or otherwise.  (None of that makes sense – ed).  (Nor does the book – ed.)   MAKING THE ARSENAL.

Untold Arsenal – rarely making sense, occasionally in the right order