Sunday, May 15th, 2011 « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade

RefWatch – Arsenal v Aston Villa (15/05/2011 16:00)

By DogFace

• Referee:              Michael Oliver
• Assistant 1:         Ron Ganfield
• Assistant 2:         Bob Pollock
• 4th Official:        Andy D’Urso

Good morning stat-fans and welcome to the penultimate RefWatch [of the 2010/2011 season]!  But before we get started on Michael Oliver (of which we don’t have a lot of data to tell the truth).  Let us just spend a moment to welcome my favourite referee as the 4^th official.  Andy D’Urso – a quite excellent official in my book… which is probably why he doesn’t get many games.

Let’s have a look at the Referee:

• Full name:                          Michael Oliver
• Date of birth:                     20 February 1985 (1985-02-20) (age 26)
• Place of birth:                   Ashington, Northumberland, England
• EPL Referee Since:          2010/2011
• EPL Games to date:         15

This is my rifle, this is my gun; this is for fighting, this is for fun…

Michael is one of the new batch – I reckon he’s a twat… but he is very young so he may get better.  Interestingly we had him as the 4^th official in the last game – this is a trend that I’m noticing quite a lot (and I’ll probably analyse this over the summer). Like a handover to a home fixture – one would imagine that Wenger would pick up on this and spend at least some of the match getting trying to get these guys on side while the one on the pitch is giving us nowt.  This is something that I thought Mourinho excelled at… it’s not football but a little ego stroking every now and then might be the difference between 3 points and nothing… and yes – I know this is wrong but it is and remains a blind-spot in our Arsenal.

Michael Oliver has had 1 game for Arsenal consisting of 0 wins, 0 draws and 1 loss

Arsenal are currently in 14^th in Michael Oliver’s personal Points Per Game League (for teams with a minimum of 1 matches played), for matches in the English Premier, with an average of 0.00 PPG.

In Michael Oliver’s personal Handicap Swing League (for teams with a minimum of 1 matches played), for matches in the English Premier, Arsenal come 12^th with an average negative swing of -1.00.

Arsenal are currently in 16^th in Michael Oliver’s personal Booking’s Per Match League (for teams with a minimum of 1 matches played), for matches in the English Premier, with an overall average of 4.00 BPM.

In Michael Oliver’s personal Fouls Per Booking League (for teams with a minimum of 1 matches played), for matches in the English Premier, Arsenal come 16^th with an overall average of 3.75 FPB.

So yeah… 1 match, we lost – take from that what you will: Arsenal 2-3 West Bromwich Albion on the 25/09/2010.  Check out Walter’s Ref Review for more info.

Michael Oliver has had 2 games for Aston Villa consisting of 0 wins, 0 draws and 2 losses

Aston Villa are currently in 15^th in Michael Oliver’s personal Points Per Game League (for teams with a minimum of 1 matches played), for matches in the English Premier, with an average of 0.00 PPG.

In Michael Oliver’s personal Handicap Swing League (for teams with a minimum of 1 matches played), for matches in the English Premier, Aston Villa come 16^th with an average negative swing of -2.50.

Aston Villa are currently in 8^th in Michael Oliver’s personal Booking’s Per Match League (for teams with a minimum of 1 matches played), for matches in the English Premier, with an overall average of 1.50 BPM.

In Michael Oliver’s personal Fouls Per Booking League (for teams with a minimum of 1 matches played), for matches in the English Premier, Aston Villa come 8^th with an overall average of 7.33 FPB.

So two matches for Villa – 2 losses… and bad losses at that – so it’s not all bad news!

This is interesting – although there is only one season’s data we can clearly see that all of the big 6 that Michael has refereed do very badly with the exception of Manchester City – who blow the roof off the graph with a +3 goal over performance against the handicap..!

I’m going to this game, it’s the last home game of the season… so all I want is a good fair game and both teams really going out to play – with regards to the league, neither team have got anything to win or lose – with regards to the global gambling markets… who can say!?

The predictortron gives us 1.804546 goals advantage – and I’ll see you in the pub beforehand, mine’s a pint.