Is there a link between possession and the red and yellow cards? « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News, supporting the club, the players and the manager

By Walter Broeckx

When I run in to a set of numbers I see from football I always try to see if I can find any logical numbers in them. So this time I was wondering if we can see if there is any link between possession and getting yellow and red cards.

In general it is that when you have the ball you normally cannot get a yellow card for a foul. Let us say in 90% of the incidents it is the team that doesn’t have the ball that commits a foul and not the other way round. I think we all can agree on that (and if you don’t just let me know). And yes I know that the player in possession can sometimes make a foul when he tries to stretch himself when he made a bad contact with the ball but those are more rare than the other way round when a defender tackles the ball holding player and commits the foul.

A bit like Johan Cruyff once said: when we have the ball, the other team can’t score. But can it also be said: when we have the ball, we can’t get a yellow or a red card?

So here we go with our first table. The table based on possession. First comes the team with most possession and last the team who hardly sees the ball.

	2010-2011	Possession ranking
	Team	Poss	Yellow	Red
1	Arsenal	60%	65	6
2	Chelsea	58%	59	1
3	Manchester United	56%	56	3
4	Manchester City	53%	71	4
5	Tottenham	53%	51	2
6	Liverpool	52%	63	2
7	Fulham	50%	52	1
8	Everton	50%	55	5
9	Newcastle	50%	78	2
10	Wigan	50%	67	4
11	Wolverhampton	50%	62	2
12	Blackpool	49%	47	2
13	Aston Villa	48%	71	2
14	Sunderland	48%	57	5
15	West Bromwich	48%	52	7
16	Birmingham	47%	57	3
17	Bolton	46%	67	5
18	West Ham	44%	59	1
19	Blackburn	41%	65	5
20	Stoke	38%	68	2

So Arsenal is top of the league when it comes to possession. Well this will not be a big surprise to most people who have seen the occasional game of Arsenal. And Stoke is at the bottom of this table. I wonder if they include throw in time in this table?

So according to my assumption and when we form the table on giving yellow cards we should be down at the bottom of the table with most yellow cards. Do we? Just look and remember you should see a mirror image of the first table.

	PossRank	2010-2011	Yellow cards order
		Team	Poss	Yellow
1	9	Newcastle	50%	78
2	4	Manchester City	53%	71
3	13	Aston Villa	48%	71
4	20	Stoke	38%	68
5	10	Wigan	50%	67
6	17	Bolton	46%	67
7	1	Arsenal	60%	65
8	19	Blackburn	41%	65
9	6	Liverpool	52%	63
10	11	Wolverhampton	50%	62
11	2	Chelsea	58%	59
12	18	West Ham	44%	59
13	14	Sunderland	48%	57
14	16	Birmingham	47%	57
15	3	Manchester United	56%	56
16	8	Everton	50%	55
17	7	Fulham	50%	52
18	15	West Bromwich	48%	52
19	5	Tottenham	53%	51
20	12	Blackpool	49%	47

Well we aren’t exactly at the bottom but in 7^th place. So meaning that despite us having a lot of the ball we do seem to get a lot of yellow cards in a game. Wolverhampton seems to be holding the centre a bit with a 11^th place in the possession table and a 10^th place in the yellow cards table.

Top of the table is Newcastle who get the most yellow cards in the EPL. Not a big surprise I would say. Except when playing Arsenal then they dropped from an average of over 2 yellow cards to just one.  Arsenal suddenly turn the dirtiest team in the whole EPL with 2 and 3 yellow cards in each game and on top of that 2 red cards also when playing Newcastle.  Would it have anything to do with the presence of D & D in those games?

But let us turn to the red cards. Because when you have possession you normally cant get a red card. So we should be at the bottom of the next table in order of the red cards. And again in normal conditions this should be the reversed table of the first table based on possession.

	Poss rank	2010-2011	Red cards order
		Team	Poss	Red
1	15	West Bromwich	48%	7
2	1	Arsenal	60%	6
3	8	Everton	50%	5
4	14	Sunderland	48%	5
5	17	Bolton	46%	5
6	19	Blackburn	41%	5
7	4	Manchester City	53%	4
8	10	Wigan	50%	4
9	3	Manchester United	56%	3
10	16	Birmingham	47%	3
11	5	Tottenham	53%	2
12	6	Liverpool	52%	2
13	9	Newcastle	50%	2
14	11	Wolverhampton	50%	2
15	12	Blackpool	49%	2
16	13	Aston Villa	48%	2
17	20	Stoke	38%	2
18	2	Chelsea	58%	1
19	7	Fulham	50%	1
20	18	West Ham	44%	1

Well we are almost top of the league also in this table. So for a team having a lot of possession we sure do manage to get ourselves red carded a lot.

Have we become a dirty team this season? Did the refs give us more yellow cards for some reason? Did the refs give us more red cards for some reason? We try to find an answer to this next season when we will analyse this from the start in our ref review.

But the old and wise words from Johan Cruyff maybe still stand but based on Arsenal you cannot say that having more of the ball means having not many yellow or red cards.

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