Newcastle v Arsenal: the influence this referee will have on the game

By Bulldog Drummond

• Is the notion there is something wrong with refereeing, a conspiracy theory?
• Uefa goes its own way, but the route is still the same: more money for the big clubs

So we approach the last away game of the season at Newcastle, and as ever can compare their home form with our away form through the season…

Pos	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
9	Newcastle United home	18	7	6	5	24	27	-3	27
4	Arsenal away	18	12	2	4	30	16	14	38

But as we know, since Newcastle were taken over by one of the most nauseating anti-human rights regimes in the world, they have recovered considerably from their previously lowly position, so it is worthwhile seeing just what impact the human rights deniers have had on the club.  Here are the last six games at home for Newcastle, away for Arsenal.

Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
Newcastle United home	6	5	0	1	7	3	4	15
Arsenal away	6	3	0	3	7	10	-3	9

This reflects the huge steps that Newcastle have taken of late, since as recently as 20 January the foot of the table showed them very much in the bottom quarter.

Pos	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
15	Leeds United	20	5	7	8	24	39	-15	22
16	Everton	19	5	4	10	24	34	-10	19
17	Watford	19	4	2	13	23	37	-14	14
18	Norwich City	21	3	4	14	10	45	-35	13
19	Newcastle United	20	1	9	10	20	43	-23	12
20	Burnley	17	1	8	8	16	27	-11	11

By way of comparison Arsenal at this time were sixth

Pos	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Manchester City	22	18	2	2	54	13	41	56
2	Liverpool	21	13	6	2	55	18	37	45
3	Chelsea	23	12	8	3	46	18	28	44
4	West Ham United	22	11	4	7	41	30	11	37
5	Tottenham Hotspur	19	11	3	5	26	22	4	36
6	Arsenal	20	11	2	7	33	25	8	35

Both teams have improved since then and if we take a look at the last ten games including home and away what we have is the two clubs both on 15 points out of the last ten games, Arsenal sitting in 7th position and Newcastle 8th.

			H	O	M	E			A	W	A	Y
Pos	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A		W	D	L	F	A		GD	Pts
1	Manchester C	10	4	1	0	19	4		4	1	0	12	1		26	26
2	Liverpool	10	4	1	0	10	1		4	1	0	9	3		15	26
3	Tottenham Ho	10	4	0	1	14	4		2	2	1	9	4		15	20
4	Brentford	10	3	1	1	7	2		3	0	2	10	8		7	19
5	Crystal Palace	10	2	3	0	5	1		3	0	2	9	5		8	18
6	Chelsea	10	2	1	2	7	10		3	1	1	13	3		7	17
7	Arsenal	10	2	0	2	6	6		3	0	3	7	10		-3	15
8	Newcastle U	10	3	0	1	4	2		2	0	4	6	13		-5	15

Newcastle’s recent games show a run of three defeats in late March and early April, followed by four wins, followed finally by two defeats.

But if we move beyond this and look at who the games were against we can see what has happened to Newcastle since the purchase of the club.  Their defeats have been against Chelsea, Everton and Tottenham in the March/April run and all three were away from home.

The victories were over Wolverhampton, Leicester, Palace and Norwich – the first three of these were at home.   The last two defeats were against Liverpool at home and Manchester City away.

In short, playing at home against mid-table and lower-table clubs at home, Newcastle is winning.  In other words if Arsenal play like a top four club they stand a chance of beating Newcastle.

However in such games, who oversees the game as referee can have an enormous impact, and in this case it is Darren England which is potentially good news for Arsenal as we can see from the figures that follow.

This season out of the first 267 games played 151 have been home wins (56.55%).   But for games refereed by Mr England that percentage drops to 42.9%.   Mr England’s figure is thus very close to the percentage of home wins given by referees during the period when there were no crowds in the ground (which was 44%).

The most obvious conclusion to be drawn from this is that Mr England is one of those few referees who is not influenced by the crowd into favouring the home team and this obviously should help Arsenal.

Mr England was promoted to the Select Group in August 2020, and was then added to the 2022 Fifa referee list of International Match Officials in December 2021.

Club	Tackles	Fouls	Yellow cards
Arsenal	513	347	57
Newcastle	619	371	79

which leads to the analysis…

Club	Tackles/foul	Fouls/yellow	Tackles/yellow
Arsenal	1.48	6.08	9.00
Newcastle	1.67	4.70	7.84

So Newcastle are allowed by referees to put in more tackles than Arsenal before the foul is called.   However when it comes to yellow cards referees are harsher on Newcastle, meaning that they pick up a yellow card after 4.70 tackles, while Arsenal get a yellow card after every 6.08 fouls.

As a result of this Arsenal can put in nine tackles before getting a yellow card, while Newcastle can only put in 7.84 tackles before getting a yellow.

Added to Mr England’s ability not to be influenced by the crowd nearly so much as most PGMO referees, it means we should stand a fighting chance in this game.

Gaslighting: the stories the media refuse to cover

Gaslighting: how refereeing in the Premier League is manipulated, and why the media never speak about it.

• 1: Are the referees and the media really out to get Arsenal, or am I just imagining it?
• 2: How discussions about refereeing are deliberately stifled by the media
• 3: Referees: the odd statistics that are simply never revealed or discussed
• 4: How we have been utterly misled about football: part 4
• 5: Hiding the problem of refereeing is destroying the credibility of the Premier League
• 6: Revealed: PL referees are not 98% accurate but actually just 75% accurate

(Footnote: the first ever mention of gaslighting in connection with football other than in this article appeared in the media just six weeks after the launch of the above series on Untold)