Newcastle Arsenal; the Untold ref preview « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News, supporting the club, the players and the manager
RefWatch – Newcastle United v Arsenal (05/02/2011 15:00)
By DogFace
- Referee: Phil Dowd
- Assistant 1: Trevor Massey
- Assistant 2: Darren Bond
- 4th Official: Stuart Attwell
Good morning stat-fans and welcome to yet another RefWatch… ok, let’s get it out there, before I begin – there was quite a frenzy kicked off all over the internet regarding Untold Arsenal and the last RefWatch in which I suggested that Lee Mason would give Everton a bit of a ‘free ride’, shall we say. Not all games are like this so if you are expecting me to gaze into my crystal ball and give you something to lump your hard-earned on then it’s possible that won’t happen for a while – it’s not often that you get the ‘perfect storm’ scenario of the last game… although you do get one or two like that every week in the other fixtures.
Let’s have a look at Referee:
- Full name: Phil Dowd
- Date of birth: 26 January 1963 (1963-01-26) (age 48)
- Place of birth: Staffordshire, England
- EPL Referee Since: 2001/2002
- EPL Games to date: 196
Kiss me Cattermole…
Ahhh… Mr Phil Dowd, yes I remember him – he’s the fat one. If you recall we’ve had him a few times this season and both those games were stinkers – there was Sunderland Vs Arsenal (18/09/2010) in which he sent off Song (I think?) and we were held to a 1 – 1 draw and some other match against the Stratford Wanderers in which we lost 2 -3. I wasn’t impressed with him in the Sunderland match but, for some reason the memory of the other game has been totally erased from my mind – so I can’t comment on that one.
Phil Dowd has had 14 games for Newcastle United consisting of 5 wins, 3 draws and 6 losses.
Newcastle United are currently in 12th in Phil Dowd’s personal Points Per Game League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the EPL, with an average of 1.29 PPG.
In Phil Dowd’s personal Handicap Swing League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the EPL, Newcastle United come 13th with an average swing of 0.00.
Newcastle United are currently in 14th in Phil Dowd’s personal Booking’s Per Match League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the EPL, with an overall average of 1.93 BPM.
In Phil Dowd’s personal Fouls Per Booking League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the EPL, Newcastle United come 14th with an overall average of 6.81 FPB.
Well that all seems fairly normal, although he uncharacteristically redlined Newcastle’s opposition FPB figures in the 2007/2008 and 2008/2009 seasons – perhaps he was trying to even up his numbers a bit for the 2002/2003 season?
What isn’t great news (for us) is the last game Dowd took charge for the Toon [this season – 31/10/2010] in which they beat Sunderland 5-1… so it seems that he was a bit crap for Newcastle until this season – such is the way of Phil Dowd as we’ll see in our next chart:
Phil Dowd has had 15 games for Arsenal consisting of 9 wins, 4 draws and 2 losses
Arsenal are currently in 2nd in Phil Dowd’s personal Points Per Game League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the EPL, with an average of 2.07 PPG.
In Phil Dowd’s personal Handicap Swing League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the EPL, Arsenal come 9th with an average positive swing of 0.16.
Arsenal are currently in 12nd in Phil Dowd’s personal Booking’s Per Match League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the EPL, with an overall average of 1.80 BPM.
In Phil Dowd’s personal Fouls Per Booking League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the EPL, Arsenal come 19th with an overall average of 6.41 FPB.
Our overall numbers look good but and (like Phil Dowd) this is a big butt – this season our numbers have crashed and we currently are looking at 0.5 PPG and an underperformance against the handicap of -0.88 of a goal.
Our 4th official today is Stuart ‘the randomiser’ Attwell – he’s only taken charge of 1 game for Newcastle (draw) and 1 game for Arsenal (win) so we won’t dwell on him and move right along to see how the other [selected] teams in the EPL perform against the handicap with Phil Dowd at the whistle:
As you can see – as with the above, this season Newcastle have bounced and Arsenal have crashed… if this is a statistical anomaly then we can hope that Big Phil will take the opportunity to even out his numbers here and we’ll walk it 0-3. However, you can also see that Manchester United (who Phil appears to not have much in the way of ‘Love’ for) have also taken a dip right back into negative territory. If we add to this ‘bigger picture’ the fact that Chelsea have also taken an unexpected ‘dip’ we might start to wonder just what exactly is going on – and then we see Manchester City and their steady over performances under Dowd from the 2008/2009 season to a place where they are now in amongst the ‘big boys’ and challenging for the title – and we start to wonder – what’s all that about then?
So – to summarise, what can we expect from Phil Dowd tomorrow? I would go into this match fairly tentatively – I think we’ll get something from it but there has been a definite change in Dowd’s patterns of late which worry me, especially if we could be considered a threat to Manchester City’s seasonal objectives – whatever happens, I’ll be watching him closely and reading Walter’s Ref Review with great interest.