Penalties for and against Arsenal. The Mike Riley factor
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By Mike Fowler
Firstly, I give no apologies for plagiarising the title in Nitram’s recent article! We have independently, and by complete coincidence, both looked at different aspects of the game and having read his article on penalties and how Arsenal were treated, I felt I should share my basic findings in terms of how teams are treated in disciplinary terms i.e. fouls conceded and yellow and red cards received.
I should say at this point, I know Tony has posted quite a bit on the subject of cards for fouls and cards for “other reasons” and I share his interest in this subject. However, my calculations are based on ALL cards received and do not separate out ‘fouls’ from ‘other reasons’. I probably should have done this, but I started this some weeks ago and don’t want to start from scratch again. I also think that there is possibly a good reason for showing all cards in this context as it, probably, gives an overall picture irrespective.
Anyway, to the bones of the matter. I compared fouls and cards for all Premier Teams over the last five full seasons plus the current season to date. All figures are taken from Whoscored.com.
For simplicity, I settled on only analysing the thirteen teams which have been present in the Premier League for all six seasons. Here is a table showing the overall figures based on the highest number fouls conceded in the period.
A cursory look shows that whilst Arsenal are in the bottom three (11th) for fouls committed and in a similar position for yellows received (10th), they are top for red cards.
In fact, despite committing 4.3% fewer fouls than the average over the past five and a bit seasons, Arsenal have actually been shown 54% more red cards than average.
But it gets worse. When we compare this to one of the media favourites such as Manchester Utd we see that despite Man U committing higher than average fouls (and 8% more than Arsenal), Arsenal have received 150% more red cards than them. And it’s not because refs don’t pull Man U up for their fouls; they’ve actually received 19.5% more yellows than Arsenal. For some reason though, refs just don’t seem inclined to convert one yellow into two or don’t actually feel their fouls are as bad as Arsenal’s. Perhaps they just don’t feel “the letter of the law” applies to all teams equally!
Moving on, Nitram’s article looked at our main adversaries this season and alluded to the idea that Liverpool were treated more favourably than us when it came to penalties….a theory which his analysis strongly supported.
So, do my own findings also support the idea that Liverpool are treated more advantageously? I’ll just share some findings and let you decide.
Liverpool, on average over the past five and a bit seasons, have committed 3% more fouls than Arsena. However Arsenal have been shown 20% more yellow cards and an incredible 122.2% more red cards. Pretty conclusive in my view.
So, I wondered whether this was just a pro-Liverpool or anti-Arsenal bias or something more. After all, it has been noted on this site more than once how so many refs are from the NW of England whilst none are from London and the SE. So I thought I’d draw up a ‘regional’ table based upon the media idea of a ‘big six’. This bizarrely includes Tottenham (lol) but that does at least give us a 3 v 3 regional split. So looking more closely at those six, what do we find?
This table is based on fouls conceded but the most obvious thing that jumped out at me was that every London club received more red cards than every club from the north west. Also, this bears no relation to the number of fouls committed since although London clubs get blown up for committing 7.3% more fouls, they end up with 19.3% more yellow cards and 64.3% more red cards than their opponents in the NW. Yet another highly significant statistical anomaly.
But the original purpose of this article was not to look at what seems a pretty conclusive regional bias but to see whether Arsenal were specifically treated worse than those who could be considered direct opponents. On that basis, how have Arsenal alone fared against their NW ‘big six’ opponents (I’ve included Man U based upon their media favouritism).
So here I compare the average for a ‘top six’ team from the north west against Arsenal.
Basically, Arsenal supposedly commit 1.6% more fouls than a NW team on average but we see 7.2% more yellow cards meaning a team from the NW can commit 7% more fouls before seeing a yellow card.
What is considerably worse is that despite only committing 1.6% more fouls we are 114% more likely to see red. (No that’s not a typo! 114%!) This means we see a red for every 111.5 fouls whilst a NW team is allowed to commit 242.5 fouls before seeing one: more than twice as many.
Like I said, I’ll let you reach your own conclusions as to whether we play on a level playing field. I’ve reached my own without too much of a problem.
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Penalties for and against Arsenal. The Mike Riley factor
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