RefWatch – Arsenal Vs Blackburn Rovers (04/02/2012 – 13:00) « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News, supporting the club, the players and the manager
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- Referee: Andre Marriner
- Assistant 1: John Flynn
- Assistant 2: Sian Massey
- 4th Official: Paul Tierney
Good morning stat-fans and welcome to RefWatch…
It’s been a depressing few days to be an Arsenal fan as we saw points drop again – what made this particularly depressing was that we only had the team to blame for a game that was in our hands to win.
This game falls on day 13 of the Chinese new year so, again, the Asian markets don’t really matter all that much, and [despite the early kick-off] we might see something of a competitive fixture… let’s just hope we can get our act together and jolly well fucking win it eh!?
I had a thought this morning as I woke up – it was off the back of a really lucid dream in which I was running away from something stupid, mildly psychotic but not exactly terrifying… I would keep holding it back (whatever it was as it kept changing shape and context) by barricading a door or knocking down a bridge [or something] and watch from relative safety as it somehow managed to overcome my obstacle; and then I’d be off again.
As I was trying to figure it all out and what it meant I felt myself becoming submerged in the act of achieving consciousness and a song that kept going around and around my head. It was the ‘Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine’ cover of the Inspiral Carpets track “This is how it feels”… except the lyrics were changed from “This is how it feels to be lonely” to “This is how it feels to be Tottenham”.
And as I woke up it struck me; all those years of taking it all for granted, duelling with United and Barcelona and laughing at the spuds – those were good times, it makes me wonder why some of the fan base grumbled so much and expressed bitterness about our ‘ambition’ and wrote off this or that player and booed them off the pitch… it seems no matter what we have we will always want more.
I accept that this the way it has always happened in football but now it’s all out of proportion as everything is built up to mean so much. I wonder how fans of clubs that get relegated must feel on the day they go down – how do they cope, how can they cope? Why not just jump off a bridge!?
This isn’t a matter of life and death – it’s much bigger than that, this is football!
And when I say football I mean the game, not just my team and I must say that I do admire some fans out there who enjoy a day out with their mates, watch a game of football and maybe have a bit of a grumble in the pub afterwards if it was a poor performance before going home safe and to some extent happy in the knowledge that they will never see their team win anything in their lifetime ever… when did it all get so spectacular, and when did the fan base get so atomised as to take every miss-kick and dropped point so utterly personally?
What emotion is that supposed to represent… passion, love or something else?
There have been a lot of books written about the lost soul of football by people who are far more talented than I that I can relate to and there has been a lot said by people who sit around me in the stands that I just don’t understand i.e. how can it be right to take the stance that if I pay [this much] money to watch a match then I am well within my rights to get my money’s worth… and if I don’t get my money’s worth of gratification then, QED, I will express my personal dissatisfaction at the situation and vent my money’s worth of bile… after all, they theorise, if I were on 50 grand a week I’d be able to take a on board a bit of criticism [bullying] and just go home and count my cash… as if money, earned or spent, were some tangible psychological shield, opiate or metaphysical shortcut to happiness…
We are, after all fans watching a football match and not some note-clutching crack-scoring addict are we not?
It is from the same mouths, that champion the argument of money equating to happiness, that crow in disbelief when a player leaves for an enhanced salary at a rival club… and it is these same mouths that will then declare in a litany of apologist self-harm that “he left to win trophies” and “we should spend some money” to win some trophies too.
Because money, trophies and individual bragging rights are all that seem to matter these days… it’s what support is all about – obviously.
If you really want to know where our Arsenal has gone – well, it’s right here, right now and it never went anywhere it is the rest of football that climbed aboard the gravy train fucked off into never-neverland – look at Liverpool, Manchester United, Manchester City and Chelsea… where did they go and who supports them now?
I don’t wish to tell you how to support our team and I don’t want to cause division in the fan base by boxing it up, to the point of exclusion, into the Wenger lovers, prawn sandwich munchers and the glory hunters or whatever. None of that is really important because if you keep dividing it up then all you are left with is a collection of individuals with no sense of direction or purpose other than that of self gratification and finger pointing when it all goes a bit pear-shaped.
Here are the markets:
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Let’s have a look at the Referee:
- Full name: Andre Marriner
- Date of birth: 01-Jan-1971 (Age 41)
- Place of birth: Birmingham
- Resides: West Midlands
- EPL/ECH Referee Since: 2003/2004
- EPL/ECH Games to date: 176
Andre Marriner – Wot’s with all them black bin liners then?
It’s Andre Marriner again… you remember him from the ground-breaking Untold Ref Review series (now with added clarity and accessibility):
Crikey, look at that, we had him in the 4-3 loss against Blackburn earlier this season… *boo*, but we also had him for the 3-5 win against Chelsea – *yay*! But then I remember last season when he gave that dodgy penalty to Liverpool… *boo*.
There’s only one way to sort the bones out of this one – let’s check out his stats!
Andre Marriner has had 11 games for Arsenal consisting of 7 wins, 2 draws and 2 losses.
Arsenal are currently in 3rd in Andre Marriner’s personal Points Per Game League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the EPL/ECH, with an average of 2.09 PPG.
In Andre Marriner’s personal Handicap Swing League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the EPL/ECH, Arsenal come 4th with an average positive swing of 0.25.
Arsenal are currently in 5th in Andre Marriner’s personal Booking’s Per Match League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the EPL/ECH, with an overall average of 1.18 BPM.
In Andre Marriner’s personal Fouls Per Booking League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the EPL/ECH, Arsenal come 5th with an overall average of 9.46 FPB.
As we can see there doesn’t appear to be anything too much to worry about in Marriner’s numbers – we do OK on points per game (although this has dropped a little of late) and he also seems to show a a more punitive approach in the tackle to our opposition (we are the high/thin red line and our opposition is the thicker/lower orange line).
Let’s investigate the booking figures in a little more depth:
Above is a seasonal breakdown on how, when and where Arsenal took all their bookings under Andre Marriner.
You can see that we have not had any bookings to our defence since 2009/2010 and the cautions we took to our midfield and attack this season were, on average, very late in the game.
Above is a seasonal breakdown on how, when and where Arsenal’s opposition took all their bookings under Andre Marriner.
It’s fairly clear to see that, of late, our opposition under Marriner get the majority of their cautions in the defence – although this is now trending later in the game and is also showing some bookings to the substitutes.
Andre Marriner has had 13 games for Blackburn Rovers consisting of 7 wins, 1 draw and 5 losses.
Blackburn Rovers are currently in 6th in Andre Marriner’s personal Points Per Game League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the EPL/ECH, with an average of 1.69 PPG.
In Andre Marriner’s personal Handicap Swing League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the EPL/ECH, Blackburn Rovers come 6th with an average positive swing of 0.12.
Blackburn Rovers are currently in 25th in Andre Marriner’s personal Booking’s Per Match League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the EPL/ECH, with an overall average of 2.23 BPM.
In Andre Marriner’s personal Fouls Per Booking League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the EPL/ECH, Blackburn Rovers come 25th with an overall average of 5.86 FPB.
Blackburn Rovers show a slight over performance overall under Andre Marriner – although this is very slight at 0.12 of a goal. I would say, other than that, Blackburn’s data under Andre Marriner looks entirely consistent and reassuringly normal. Just look at how the FPB/BPM for and against interweave – it feels right but let’s investigate these a little closer and see when and where the bookings are distributed.
Above is a seasonal breakdown on how, when and where Blackburn Rovers took all their bookings under Andre Marriner.
Above is a seasonal breakdown on how, when and where Blackburn Rovers’s opposition took all their bookings under Andre Marriner.
Again – in the above two graphs everything looks fairly well balanced for Blackburn under Andre Marriner although they have taken slightly more bookings this season than their opposition.
Let’s move on now to check out how Andre Marriner performs against selected teams in the EPL:
I would say that Manchester United are the standout performers under Andre Marriner, Arsenal do ok and Blackburn also mustn’t grumble… Chelsea are on a downer and Manchester City did well last season but are yet to have a game under Marriner this season.
The Predictortron gives Arsenal a 1.682692 goal advantage – which pretty much exacly tallies up with the markets (if you adjust for odds). All I can say is that I hope the Predictortron, and the markets, are right!