Previously…
ByTony Attwood
As we have noted, the referee for the Liverpool game is [Chris Kavanagh,](https://www.whoscored.com/referees/780/show/chris-kavanagh) a man who is highly experienced in the game but who does not always see the game as many neutrals do.
And this really is part of the problem with PGMOL. Some of their referees will see two-thirds of the matches they are in charge of in the Premier League as home wins.. Some see around half of their games as away wins, while others see just under a half as draws.
Now obviously we don’t expect every referee to come out with identical figures for the percentage of the games they see as home wins, etc, but the differences here are extraordinary, and surely would make any neutral observer shout in alarm.
Indeed, if the media were doing their job they would most certainly be exploring why John Brooks sees around two-thirds of his Premier League games as home wins, Anthony Taylor sees over half the PL games he oversees as away wins, and Tim Robinson sees only just under half of the PL games he referees as draws.
Yes, we would expect some deviation from referees, but how can anyone explain patterns like this? Indeed, I believe it was an awareness of these refereeing patterns that caused a lot of problems for the old football pools companies as punters began to look at who the referee was, rather than who was playing..
In relation to Liverpool v Arsenal, Chris Kavanagh sees 32% of his games as home wins, 24% as away wins, and 44% as draws. Since a draw would probably satisfy both teams, that is certainly looking like a strong possibility. With this referee, however, away wins are below average, and I would suspect this has reduced Arsenal’s chances of winning.
The table below shows the figures for last season from a handful of highly experienced referees.
Referee
Games
Home
Away
Draw
John Brooks
16
68.8%
12.5%
18.8%
Chris Kavanagh
25
32.0%
24.0%
44.0%
Michael Oliver
26
30.8%
38.5%
30.8%
Tim Robinson
15
26.7%
26.7%
46.7%
Anthony Taylor
31
25.8%
51.6%
22.6%
Average of all refs
**40.8%**
**34.7%**
**24.5%**
And I would stress, as before, that these are the figures across all the games in the Premier League for each of these experienced and highly regarded referees. But the question remains – how can their average percentages be so incredibly different? They all do move around from club to club week by week, and yet they consistently oversee such different results.
So as we have noted, our referee tomorrow likes draws, and given we are playing the champions away, that might be an acceptable result.
As we have noted, Arsenal have been doing ok with Liverpool of late: two wins, four draws and one defeat in the last seven games since October 2022. And I suspect that both sides would probably feel a draw was ok.
At the moment of writing this, we have the not-surprising result of Chelsea 2 Fulham 0, which leaves the table before the 3 pm kick-offs at the top….
1
Chelsea
3
2
1
0
7
1
6
7
2
Arsenal
2
2
0
0
6
0
6
6
3
Tottenham Hotspur
2
2
0
0
5
0
5
6
4
Liverpool
2
2
0
0
7
4
3
6
A draw would take Arsenal back to the top, although Tottenham are playing Bournemouth at 3pm at New-WHL. Bournemouth won one and lost one of their opening games, so the noisy neighbours could potentially rise up to nine points. And indeed we should remember the rather nify run of games Tottenham have been granted at this time by the anonymous fixtures committee.
After Bournemouth at home today, it is bottom of the league, West Ham away, Brighton in 18th also away and then Wolverhampton Wanderers at home. Wolverhampton are 19th.
Ah well, we shall ultimately see.
.