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Victory Through Harmony

By Walter Broeckx

After my first article on fouls I went a step further and have a look at the yellow cards the teams have received in the EPL this season.

The first thing I did was see how many yellow cards were handed out and made an average for each team on how many cards they get in a game.

Team	Games played	Yellow cards	Average/game
Newcastle	23	48	2,09
Aston Villa	24	50	2,08
Man City	24	49	2,04
Stoke	23	41	1,78
Bolton	24	41	1,71
Wigan	24	41	1,71
West Ham	24	40	1,67
Liverpool	24	39	1,63
Blackburn	24	39	1,63
Arsenal	23	37	1,61
Wolverhampton	23	37	1,61
Sunderland	24	38	1,58
Man Utd	23	36	1,57
Birmingham	22	33	1,50
Chelsea	23	33	1,43
Tottenham	23	33	1,43
West Brom	23	32	1,39
Blackpool	23	29	1,26
Everton	23	27	1,17
Fulham	24	28	1,17

The team that has received most yellow cards this season is Aston Villa with 50 cards in total. And just behind them in second place we have Manchester City with 49 and then Newcastle completes the top 3 with 48.  And then we can find some other teams who we can expect high in the list like Stoke, Bolton and Wigan.

Again Arsenal is in a mid table position.  Fulham and Everton are the teams who get the lowest cards and end on the same number when it comes to average yellow cards per game.

Now this is all nice but one cannot draw any conclusions from this. But when you add the fouls a team has made you get a more interesting table. So let us have a look at this.

Team	Games played	Total fouls made	Yellow cards	Fouls/card
Newcastle	23	273	48	5,69
Aston Villa	24	296	50	5,92
Man City	24	293	49	5,98
Stoke	23	256	41	6,24
West Ham	24	259	40	6,48
Sunderland	24	253	38	6,66
Man Utd	23	241	36	6,69
Birmingham	22	221	33	6,70
Tottenham	23	226	33	6,85
Wolverhampton	23	260	37	7,03
Chelsea	23	236	33	7,15
Arsenal	23	266	37	7,19
Blackburn	24	283	39	7,26
West Brom	23	239	32	7,47
Liverpool	24	292	39	7,49
Wigan	24	307	41	7,49
Bolton	24	310	41	7,56
Blackpool	23	235	29	8,10
Fulham	24	261	28	9,32
Everton	23	287	27	10,63

In this table one should be able to see how bad a foul is. As in the first table  making a foul like a push is counted in the same way as making a tackle from behind. But in this table one should be able to see if the fouls that has been made are dirtier or not.

And for the first three teams this makes no difference.  They commit a lot of fouls, get a lot of yellow cards for them and this could mean that they are playing more dirty. And one can see that some teams end up higher in this table and the higher you end the “dirtier” your fouls are.

And so we can see that Tottenham despite committing not many fouls end up higher in this table. So the fouls they make are considered worse in general than Arsenal. We fall back a bit in this table and this means that we make a mid table number of fouls but they are more little fouls than dirty fouls.

One of the most surprising things is that Everton who ended in 3^rd place in the average fouls per game table ends in last place in this table. This could mean that they do make a lot of fouls but that they are small fouls. Or that the refs consider them that way. Let us have a look at this next week I would suggest when we play them. Prepare yourself for a lot of fouls, most of them small ones.

Finally I will give you the red cards table.

Team	Games played	Red Cards
West Brom	23	6
Arsenal	23	5
Man City	24	5
Sunderland	24	4
Bolton	24	4
Wigan	24	4
Everton	23	3
Tottenham	23	2
Stoke	23	2
Wolverhampton	23	2
Liverpool	24	2
Blackburn	24	2
Birmingham	22	1
Man Utd	23	1
Chelsea	23	1
Newcastle	23	1
Blackpool	23	1
Aston Villa	24	1
West Ham	24	1
Fulham	24	0

I just left it like that and didn’t count an average per game.  As this would be a little bit silly when no team gets more than one red card per game.

But when you look at this table you can see some strange things. West Bromwich ends in first place and this is a bit of a surprise for me. I never considered them a dirty team.

And look at us in second place with the rich boys from City. 5 red cards is a high result.  And what a low result for Manchester United. From the games I have seen from them I can add that they should have had Fletcher and Ferdinand sent off against us. A defender should have been send off against Villa when he made a penalty foul on a Villa player who was going through on goal. Dean gave a yellow card. We can remember Neville against WBA who brought a player down in the penalty area who was clear on goal ready to score.  The ref gave nothing at all. And maybe I even forgot a few other events of this type.

So if you take just those things in consideration one can see that in fact this table is in the hands of the refs and not down to following the rules like it should be. The refs can have a big influence on the results of games by giving or not giving red cars. And I really don’t mind if one of our players gets a red card when it is deserved but then I would like to see it happen for everyone in the same way.

Maybe I should end this series of articles by taking off my hat for Fulham.  Played 24 games,  lowest in the yellow cards table, no red cards so far.  But maybe they have been extremely lucky with their refs.  Or maybe they simply try not to go over the line.

Herbert Chapman at Huddersfield Town