By Bulldog Drummond
- Arsenal v Sunderland: a contrast in statues
- Arsenal v Sunderland: difficult years for the opposition on and off the pitch
Three of the four quarter finals in the League Cup this season are being played in London. Brentford are playing at home to Chelsea, and Tottenham are playing West Ham while the other game is Liverpool against Leicester
Sunderland have won the old First Division of the League six times, most recently in 1936, the FA Cup twice (most recently as a second division team in 1972–73), They also won Division 2 in 1976 and Division 3 in 1988. In more recent times they have won the second tier of English football (under different names) four times: 1996, 1999, 2005 and 2007. Which is of course four more times than Arsenal have done, particularly with Arsenal not being out of the top league for over 100 years.
They also won the Football League Trophy last season beating Tranmere Rovers 1-0 at Wembley.
Transfer Market reports that they have injuries to Jordan Willis, Niall Huggins, Denver Hume, Dennis Cirkin, Aiden McGeady, and Like O’Nien, which might seem like a lot but they are something of bunch of hearty roughs in League One and may well recover quickly.
Tackles, fouls and yellow cards
If you are a regular reader of Untold you will know that before each game we analyse the number of tackles, fouls and yellow cards that the two teams have to their name. Unfortunately, this sort of detail isn’t available when it comes to League One teams, but we have got data on the number of fouls and the number of yellow cards, which of course gives us the “fouls per yellow card” position of each club.
| Fouls per game | Yellow card per game | Fouls per yellow | |
| Arsenal | 8.89 | 1.38 | 6.44 |
| Sunderland | 6.67 | 1.91 | 3.49 |
Arsenal are shown as committing more fouls per game than Sunderland, but part of that will be because a tackle that is a foul in the Premier League is not a foul in League One. It should be, but to keep the game flowing referees are more lenient in the lower leagues. However when it comes to dishing out the yellow cards, referees are more inclined toward the Premier League model, and so although Arsenal are seen by referees to commit more fouls, they get penalised less in terms of cards.
In fact, in terms of Premier League fouls Arsenal are one from bottom in terms of the fouls committed per game, currently being on 8.89 per game as shown above, with only Manchester City scoring fewer on 8.78
In terms of yellow cards Arsenal are 17th out of 20 clubs in the yellow card table, equal with Liverpool with 25 cards. Only Leicester and West Ham have fewer cards. Sunderland have 44 yellow cards, the 8th highest number in the league.
So quite obviously Sunderland are picking up more than twice as many yellow cards per game than Arsenal and something is causing it. We may suppose that they could be a bunch of hearty roughs, for example.
As for the referee – he is Simon Hooper. Here is his record this season…
| Games | Fouls per game | Yellow per game | Fouls per yellow | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Premier League | 6 | 25.00 | 3.83 | 6.52 |
| Championship | 5 | 21.40 | 4.80 | 4.45 |
| League Two | 1 | 25.00 | 5.00 | 5.00 |
| League Cup | 1 | 19.00 | 1.00 | 19.00 |
So if he maintains his Premier League standard of 6.52 fouls per yellow, and maintains that against both teams, we will be in trouble, because Sunderland are regularly adjudged to foul less than Arsenal.
But if he judges both terms by Premier League standards in terms of fouls committed, they are liable to have quite a few players on yellow cards and maybe even one or two sent off.
More tomorrow ahead of the game.
I think it would be a great idea if Untold Arsenal collaborated with Tomkins Times about the poor refereeing in the premier league. Tomkins Times has similar complaints about PGMA decisions
Utterly amazing. Many fans, and most definitely this site, have been banging on for years about how incompetent Premiership refs have been. Admittedly most of them have been Arsenal fans….can’t think why!
Suddenly, a couple of blatant decisions go against Liverpool and Alan Shearer’s home team! Suddenly everybody is questioning referees. It doesn’t make sense. These people didn’t dare question refs before (or chose not to do so), just wondering whether some sort of contract has just ended!!
It was interesting though that, when questioned about Kane’s leg breaking let off, Shearer became extraordinarily embarrassed and actually admitted that England captains are given preferential treatment by referees…
Mikey
Re Kane
As did Redknapp as I mentioned elsewhere.
Mikey
“Suddenly, a couple of blatant decisions go against Liverpool”
I know what you mean when you say ‘a couple’ but really it was only one in fact.
The sending off of the Liverpool player was the correct decision. So it wasn’t a debatable decision that went against them. It was a red card challenge, he got a red card. He cannot claim Liverpool were hard done by with that. Yes it was used in comparison to Kanes challenge but that’s different.
So in actual fact we are talking about ONE decision that went against Liverpool. ONE ! And that is Kane receiving a yellow when he should of received a red. Fine I agree. But lets put that in perspective.
As I recall there have been at least 3 occasions this year when our opponent should of been down to 10 men, including early on in the first half.
Yes, pundits and ex referees have conceded post match that they should of been, but apart from that concession there was very little, if any of the outrage we hear because a decision has gone against Liverpool.
Just another example of the different attitude taken by the media towards Arsenal.
Okay, as a couple of us have said, things do seem to be improving slightly, but we have a long way to go before we receive the benevolence that’s constantly shown to the likes of Liverpool’
As for this acceptance that seems to be emerging that referees have actually been refereeing Kane differently to other players on the basis of ‘who he is’, then surely that is opening a rather large can of worms, because if favour can be shown to a ‘player’ for whatever reason, then surely it has to be accepted that favour can be shown towards a ‘club’ based on who they are, or a ‘manager’ based on who he is, all things I, and others on here have been claiming for years goes on, and often get called, among other things, conspiracy theorist for claiming so.
My question is, if Redknap had “Thought this for a long time” why has it took him so long to say something ?
This means when he’s sat there on the panel discussing one of Kanes earlier indiscretions that have gone unpunished and said nothing, or even defended him. WHY ?
Was it as some Untolders suspect, an agreement between SKY (the media in general?) and the PGMO?
Was it just SKY policy not to criticize certain players/teams/managers ?
Was it fear of losing his job ?
Was it fear of ridicule from his peers ?
Whatever it was he should do the decent thing and explain exactly why it took him so long to actually say what we have all known for years.
Lets get this right, this admission, live on SKY Sports is a big moment, and it should not be allowed to pass.
It was more than one decision though and to be fair to Klopp he wasn’t complaining about the Robertson one . There was of course Kane’s over the top leg breaker but also the penalty and the real complaint was about how VAR was used in the different situations .
If it was fine to refer the ref to the screen for one , then why not for the other and was the penalty incident reviewed ?
Various comments have been made whether accurate or not is moot but saying Kane’s was not dangerous because , it appears the position of Robertson’s leg was a key factor in the decision not to call Tierney over to the pitchside monitor as he saw it coming and lifted his leg to minimise damage is just plainly wrong .
I am sure that Robertson feels happy that his quick thinking enabled Spurs to play with 11 men for 70 plus minutes .
Tony
Kane should have seen red according to Keith Hackett
Hackett tweeted: “How can Harry Kane stay on the pitch after that reckless challenge that endangered the safety of an opponent?
“Excessive force. Serious foul play challenge, red card, another refereeing error. It is a lack of accountability when big errors are made. No apology, no explanation, carry on boys you can do what you want!
“How can he defend a player who is out of control, uses excessive force? Why doesn’t VAR suggest a look at the monitor to help the referee? That’s what it is there for.”
Join the club Mr Hackett.
Untold have been asking these questions for years, and not just because Liverpool have been hard done by.
Will anything change after this latest charade from ‘The best referees in the World’? (thanks for that Talkshite)?
Not a chance.
@Nitram,
The England captain has his own set of rules and he must be protected….it has been affirmed and guess this is now a fact.
Well, if you look at the Arsenal sqad, you see at least 3 players who are likable, liked and part of the England squad.
They were kid of summer heroes and received lots of ‘love’ from fans throughout thick or thin.
And, say what you want, refereeing this season has not been as piss poor as it was before…
So, is there an extended rule that tries to protect the England team members, as well as the captain ?
The question has to be asked, has it not ?
Chris
In general I do agree.
Personally I don’t think we have been done any ‘favours’ as such, I just believe we have had our fair share of 50/50’s go our way. Like 50% of them !
Penalties given to us that certainly would not of been a year ago. Players not sent off that would of been. Being given the benefit of the doubt when we wouldn’t of been.
But it’s only that ‘evening out’ we hear so much about actually doing that, which certainly hasn’t been happening for many a year.
And yes, as I said a few days ago I certainly believe it’s on the back of the good will being extended to our youngsters through the media, which supports my theory that the referees by and large referee at the behest of the medias wants and don’t wants, and usually they want us screwed.
It seems treating Arsenal with a bit of balance for a change is currently de rigueur.
Mr. Klopp’s comments about the referee were fully justified, – no question about that.
Interesting, however, that no action is to be taken against him. What a contrast to the treatment of Mr. Wenger in similar circumstances!
The high esteem in which Bukayo Saka may be widely held did not protect him from the assault by the Palace player, which was subsequently agreed by pundits as meriting a red card. Don’t forget also the Everton player stamp on the Arsenal player’s face, which was actually looked at by VAR and not considered even a foul.
In my view, we are still being cheated by officials – yet somehow we are expected to be grateful and happy that Xhaka did not get sent off at Leeds
@Nitram, @ John L,
what is hapening, in my humble opinion, is just a proof of the utter incompetence of the refereeing in general (referees, organisation) and treason of the beautiful game they are commiting match after match whereas their role and pledge is to protect it.
The nice thing is that, as with all incompetents and idiots, the fact they never ever got punished, (they obviously have no quality control), so they get used to doing bad work, get arrogant, and at some point it really shows. The king is naked for all to see, not just when Arsenal are playing.
It looks like the system is out of control unraveling. And no one in the PL cares about Arsenal, but there it is sacred Pool! who are being robbed. Good for them.
Untold needs to keep on banging that drum….