Friday, September 16th, 2011 « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade
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- Referee: Andre Marriner
- Assistant 1: Gary Beswick
- Assistant 2: Scott Ledger
- 4th Official: Michael Oliver
Good morning stat-fans and welcome to RefWatch… Today I unveil the latest evolution of the RefWatch series – but before we get into all that; please allow me to explain where I’m going. Apparently the old RefWatch was too numbersy – stats are nice but the graphs were cluttered and confusing to the uninitiated reader – i.e. it was not very accessible.
The New RefWatch cuts down on clutter and numbers BUT (crucially) it actually contains way MORE data – the kind of data I wanted to put in it last season but it choked the graphs when I did.
Here’s a breakdown of how the new charts work – each line on the graph will visualise two related figures one will be the plot point on the graph and the other will be the width of the line (I’m still tweaking the widths and trying to standardise these graphs– it’s a work in progress), for example:
FPB/BPM breaks down as:
FPB: Use the vertical axis to find out the average Fouls Per booking figure for that season
BPM: The width of the line will indicate the average Bookings Per Match for that season.
So a high thin line for FPB/BPM would indicate a lot of fouls and very little bookings – and a low thin line for AHS/PPG would indicate an underperformance against the betting line and very few points taken.
Simples!
Hover over the graph for a key to the acronyms – good luck!
Let’s have a look at the Referee:
- Full name: Andre Marriner
- Date of birth: 01-Jan-1971 (Age 40)
- Place of birth: Birmingham
- Resides: West Midlands
- EPL Referee Since: 2004/2005
- EPL Games to date: 113
My god DogFace… where did you get this data?!
It’s Andre Marriner again… you remember him from that game against Liverpool last season when he shoved a metaphorical stick in the spokes of our title challenge by denying us a penalty and giving Liverpool an incorrect penalty off the back of an incorrect free kick in the dying moments. Wenger said ‘sacreblu’; Kenny said ‘Piss off’… how are them there peno calls going for you at the moment eh Kenny? Whinging all the way to the FA at the first mugging I see?
Hmm…
…honeymoon over?
Let’s check out his stats!
Andre Marriner has had 11 games for Blackburn Rovers consisting of 6 wins, 0 draws and 5 losses.
Blackburn Rovers are currently in 7th in Andre Marriner’s personal Points Per Game League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the English Premier, with an average of 1.64 PPG.
In Andre Marriner’s personal Handicap Swing League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the English Premier, Blackburn Rovers come 7th with an average positive swing of 0.14.
Blackburn Rovers are currently in 16th in Andre Marriner’s personal Booking’s Per Match League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the English Premier, with an overall average of 2.09 BPM.
In Andre Marriner’s personal Fouls Per Booking League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the English Premier, Blackburn Rovers come 15th with an overall average of 6.22 FPB.
From the graph we can see that Blackburn’s FPB/BPM figures both for Blackburn and their opposition are fairly in line with each other – if anything Blackburn tend to get booked a little more than their opposition – this could be due to the way they approach the game.
In the wobbly blue line we can see a slight dip in form under Marriner last season in that it is showing a trend towards an underperformance; the thinning of this line indicates the average number of points per game are reaching a more realistic level.
Let’s look now at an all NEW graph that I call the Booking Index – this graph details, on average, when in the match the specified team gets booked and the player position booked. As before the position of the line against the vertical axis will indicate the average time of the booking and the thickness of the line indicates the average number of bookings of players in that position.
So – a high fat orange line would indicate that the referee often books the specified teams defence out of the challenge early, a low thin line or no line would indicate the opposite. The number of minutes goes up to 100 and if there are no bookings then, for the clarity of the graph, the line will ‘bottom out’ at that… let’s check it out!
So from the above graph we can see that Blackburn’s opposition get booked by Marriner less frequently than Blackburn.
Blackburn take the majority of their bookings under Marriner in the midfield and defence positions around the halfway mark in the game – this seems fairly consistent… although – we could assume that the dip in the defence bookings for Blackburn under Marriner last season was taken up by the rise in substitute bookings later in the game – this could indicate that a physical tactic was used and players under a booking were swapped out to avoid dismissal?
Feel free to analyse at will – and comment on anything you see and theories you might have.
Let’s crack on now and see how Arsenal perform under Andre!
Andre Marriner has had 9 games for Arsenal consisting of 6 wins, 2 draws and 1 loss.
Arsenal are currently in 2nd in Andre Marriner’s personal Points Per Game League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the English Premier, with an average of 2.22 PPG.
In Andre Marriner’s personal Handicap Swing League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the English Premier, Arsenal come 3rd with an average positive swing of 0.44.
Arsenal are currently in 1st in Andre Marriner’s personal Booking’s Per Match League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the English Premier, with an overall average of 1.00 BPM.
In Andre Marriner’s personal Fouls Per Booking League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the English Premier, Arsenal come 1st with an overall average of 10.67 FPB.
From the above graph we can see that it looks like Arsenal gets away with more in the challenge than our opposition (wobbly red line). Our average FPB figures are quite high and our average BPM relatively low. Our opposition under Marriner (wobbly orange line) is fat and low[er than ours] which is encouraging and would Arsenal’s more technical approach to the game.
The fat wobbly blue line shows that although our form has taken a slight dip of late under Mariner, we seem to be on the rise and our average Points Per Game is consistently good.
From the above graphs we can see that over the last 4 seasons we have, on average, been booked earlier in the game under Marriner than our opposition. Although last season these bookings have come later in the match and have predominantly consisted of our defence and midfield. On the whole the difference between bookings patterns between us and our opposition under Marriner are not what I would expect considering Arsenal are a technical team of non-physical players – the 2007/2008 season seems to reflect what I would expect (given the Marriner likes to ‘let the game flow’) but the 2008/2009 to 2009/2010 it looks like our opposition’s game ‘flowed’ a little bit more than ours in certain areas of the pitch.
Let’s move on now to check out how Andre Marriner performs against selected teams in the EPL:
Right – there you go – much like the last incarnation of this chart except the line thickness represents the, you guessed it, Points Per Game… sorry about the untitled Axis’ – it’s getting late and that’s something I’ll fix for next time.
We can see from the above that Arsenal’s performance under Mariner has dropped over the 2008/2009 season to the 2009/2010 season – yet taken an upturn last season while retaining a fairly healthy PPG average. Blackburn’s performance has gone downhill under Mariner – but it seems very up and down over the seasons. Nothing much more of note here except for the crash in Chelsea’s AHS swing and PPG in conjunction with Manchester City’s rise.
The Predictortron gives Blackburn Rovers a -2.635416 goal disadvantage… and after a busy start to the season – let’s hope we’ve got the legs left for a solid 3 pointer.