Which club has the dirtiest players in the Premier League this season?

by Tony Attwood

It’s a while since we’ve reiterated the rules on yellow cards (one of our three prime measures of club and player tactics) so in case you have forgotten they are…

Five yellows accumulated before match week 19 results in a one-match ban.

Ten yellows accumulated by week 32 will result in a two-match ban.

Fifteen yellows by week 38 means a three-match ban.

Twenty yellows in a season can result in the Regulatory Commission punishing the player in a manner that they deem to be most fitting.  That doesn’t often happen.

I believe “week 19” means the weekend after which most clubs have played 19 games, rather than the week in which they should have played 19 games, but strangely it is a little hard to find that definition confirmed 

And if that is right, then matchweek (or as it is called in some places gameweek) 19 includes the games on Boxing Day and 27 December.   So players have to avoid five yellows by then.  Which by and large makes it four games to go.

Now of course under this system, it is possible for a manager to avoid playing a player who is likely to get one more yellow card to take him over the limit, although I am not sure how often that happens.

So who could be up for the chop – and indeed who is already chopped?

Pos	Player	Club	Nationality	Stat
1.	Emmanuel Dennis	Watford	Nigeria	6
2.	Richarlison	Everton	Brazil	5
2.	Oliver Skipp	Tottenham Hotspur	England	5
2.	James Tarkowski	Burnley	England	5
2.	Ashley Westwood	Burnley	England	5
6.	Josh Brownhill	Burnley	England	4
6.	Liam Cooper	Leeds United	Scotland	4
6.	Rúben Neves	Wolverhampton Wanderers	Portugal	4
6.	Shane Duffy	Brighton and Hove Albion	Ireland	4
6.	Adam Lallana	Brighton and Hove Albion	England	4
6.	Aymeric Laporte	Manchester City	Spain	4
6.	Jamaal Lascelles	Newcastle United	England	4
6.	John McGinn	Aston Villa	Scotland	4
6.	Tyrone Mings	Aston Villa	England	4
6.	Rodrigo	Leeds United	Spain	4
6.	Mathias Normann	Norwich City	Norway	4
6.	Christian Nørgaard	Brentford	Denmark	4
6.	Paul Pogba	Manchester United	France	4
6.	Declan Rice	West Ham United	England	4
6.	Matt Ritchie	Newcastle United	Scotland	4

No one from Arsenal – which is not surprising as we are running the “don’t tackle” approach to football, and tackles are of course the prime source of fouls.

If we declare all players on four or more yellows to be a sign of the dirtier players in the league, we can see which clubs are the naughtiest in this regard

• Burnley: 3 players
• Brighton and Hove: 2 players
• Newcastle United: 2 players
• Aston Villa: 2 players

So it looks like most clubs are managing their playing habit quite well in terms of not losing multiple players.   Except Burnley – which is certainly what we found on our away trip there.

Interestingly Burnley are 13th in the fouling league having committed 44 fouls fewer than Watford, the out and out fouling champions of the year.  Which really does tell us something about the fouls Burnley put in – they come from a couple a rather irksome oiks.

And what is even more interesting is the fact none of the top five fouling teams has a player pending a suspension – which clearly suggests that these days the tactic is either to cut tackling or to share the fouls out to avoid the yellows and the bans.

But those forthcoming bans do reflect the number of yellow cards certain clubs pick up.

Pos	Club	Yellow cards
1.	Brighton and Hove Albion	32
2.	Newcastle United	32
3.	Aston Villa	28
4.	Burnley	28
5.	Leeds United	28
6.	Manchester United	26
7.	Watford	26
8.	Norwich City	23
9.	Crystal Palace	22
10.	Southampton	22
11.	Tottenham Hotspur	22
12.	Wolverhampton Wanderers	22
13.	Everton	21
14.	Brentford	20
15.	Manchester City	19
16.	Arsenal	17
17.	Leicester City	17
18.	Liverpool	14
19.	West Ham United	14
20.	Chelsea	13

Which all rather explains why Untold Arsenal invented the phrase “rotational fouling” way, way back in our early days, to explain how clubs played against us in the Wenger years while avoiding yellows and reds.

As noted from time to time, the phrase has slipped into journalistic use.  Our contribution to the lexicon, no less.

And here is one more thought.  We are almost one-third of the way through the season and we see that two clubs have collected almost twice as many yellows as Arsenal.   And looking at that Liverpool total of 14, it shows just how different their behaviour was in the game against us last time out as they dramatically upped their fouling rate, just for that game.

What a naughty bunch of ne’er-do-wells those fellows are in the north west.