RefWatch – Blackpool v Arsenal (10/04/2011 13:30) « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News, supporting the club, the players and the manager

RefWatch – Blackpool v Arsenal (10/04/2011 13:30)

By DogFace

• Referee:              Lee Mason
• Assistant 1:         Andy Halliday
• Assistant 2:         Mick McDonough
• 4th Official:         Mark Halsey

Good morning stat-fans and welcome to RefWatch lite.  This week I’m not going to give you all the usual blah… probably because its 22:30 and I’m pooped – I’ve spent a little time over the last few weeks re-engineering my database and having some fun.  It’s sad, I know, but football statistics and data modelling are the equivalent of the latest computer game for me, I crack the codes – pound the keys and go ‘ooh’ at what pops out the other side.  On Friday I indulged in a little exercise called ‘The Predictortron’ – this was an algorithm that stood on the shoulders of the on previous procedures and data models I have written and would model match form against bias to essentially work out how many goals better one team was against the other for any given match.  It’s still a little crude – and this was its first outing – as it were… I did a quick test it on last week’s matches with a representative (older) dataset and it got 50% correct – so I wasn’t expecting much.  Today, however the Predictortron ™ toddled off and slurped up the fixtures and official data and spat out some rather interesting results – out of the seven matches it got five correct and 2 wrong… the most surprising thing was that the predicted goal differences for the correct matched were spot on.

This made me go ‘ooh’ – surely this isn’t chance and, if this isn’t chance then what does that say about the EPL officials whose statistics form a rather large part of my calculations?

Let’s have a look at Referee:

• Full name:                           Lee S[hit]. Mason
• Date of birth:                     29 October 1971 (1971-10-29) (age 39)
• Place of birth:                    Bolton, Lancashire, England
• EPL Referee Since:          2005/2006
• EPL Games to date:         79

Robin and I were wondering; exactly how much does an EPL referee get paid these days?

Ahh – it’s Lee Mason again, you may remember him from the Everton match in which our captain, Cesc Fabregas, saw fit to ask how much he was paid to make the decisions he did – we won that 2-1 largely thanks to the great performance but also, in part, to the crowd watching the replay of the offside Everton goal on the big screen and, in unison, forming the learned (and some would say ‘correct’) opinion  that Lee was in fact “a wanker”.

Lee Mason has had 2 games for Blackpool consisting of 1 win, 0 draws and 1 loss

Blackpool are currently in 12th in Lee Mason’s personal Points Per Game League (for teams with a minimum of 2 matches played), for matches in the EPL, with an average of 1.50 PPG.

In Lee Mason’s personal Handicap Swing League (for teams with a minimum of 2 matches played), for matches in the EPL, Blackpool come 10th with an average positive swing of 0.50.

Blackpool are currently in 24th in Lee Mason’s personal Booking’s Per Match League (for teams with a minimum of 2 matches played), for matches in the EPL, with an overall average of 2.50 BPM.

In Lee Mason’s personal Fouls Per Booking League (for teams with a minimum of 2 matches played), for matches in the EPL, Blackpool come 21st with an overall average of 5.40 FPB.

Lee Mason has had 6 games for Arsenal consisting of 2 wins, 2 draws and 2 losses

Arsenal are currently in 15th in Lee Mason’s personal Points Per Game League (for teams with a minimum of 2 matches played), for matches in the EPL, with an average of 1.33 PPG.

In Lee Mason’s personal Handicap Swing League (for teams with a minimum of 2 matches played), for matches in the EPL, Arsenal come 12th with an average negative swing of -0.17.

Arsenal are currently in 27th in Lee Mason’s personal Booking’s Per Match League (for teams with a minimum of 2 matches played), for matches in the EPL, with an overall average of 2.83 BPM.

In Lee Mason’s personal Fouls Per Booking League (for teams with a minimum of 2 matches played), for matches in the EPL, Arsenal come 27th with an overall average of 3.59 FPB.

As you can see from the above graphs  – our stats under Lee Mason are pretty poor… but this is Blackpool and, under Iain Holloway, they are the kind of team who like to play football and will be looking to really enjoy this match.  I can see them getting a lot from Lee – but I doubt they will take it all i.e. they are not a bunch of cynical northern shit-kickers who will relish the opportunity to hoof us off the park.

Predictortron says 0-3 to Arsenal… with a low certainty percentile warning due to the lack of form data between the two teams.

Come on you reds!