RefWatch – Stoke City Vs Arsenal (28/04/2012 – 15:00) « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade
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- Referee: Chris Foy
- Assistant 1: John Flynn
- Assistant 2: Darran Cann
- 4th Official: Andre Marriner
Good morning stat-fans and welcome to RefWatch…
There are some interesting appointments for this weekend’s and midweek fixtures. We, of course, have Chris Foy for this match (more about that in a minute) but the most interesting of the other fixtures, from a Ref Watch and Arsenal perspective, are for the two teams snapping at our heels:
- Wigan Athletic v Newcastle United
- Bolton Wanderers v Tottenham Hotspur
Interestingly, both of these two fixtures are refereed by Mike Dean (he is a busy boy)… now – those of you paying attention will be aware that there is a rather interesting correlation between Mike Dean and Harry Redknapp’s Tottenham as in both the flat (official) match statistics and the Untold referee statistics – Tottenham are heavily favoured by Mr. Dean.
Which begs the obvious question – just how did Mike Dean get these two fixtures [that directly affect Tottenham’s run in] that could well decide the 4th place spot?
Hello PGMOL, if you’re listening – I’m not buying this ‘random referee selection’ guff and I am not reassured by your PR statements regarding regulation and performance monitoring of your staff. I do not and cannot trust your organisation nor do I trust Mike Riley to do what is best for our sport. You cannot continue to remain opaque. There are the mainstream rumblings of shifting paradigms that you block your ears too. Pretty soon questions will be asked and you will become a matter of public concern and therefore subject to a tribunal of inquiry… when that happens we will be ‘all ears’ and, word of advice, you had better have your stories straight.
Think Italy 2006… Think PGMOL – think Leveson; there will be plenty of that, no doubt, as everyone concerned scrabbles around for a whistle to blow and a finger to point.
Of course this series of match day appointments also has the Manchester Derby which stands out as possibly the most liquid of football markets on the face of the planet ever and, less significantly (for the starry eyed mugs), the title decider!
How exciting!
The man in control of this £5 billion+ market will be Andre Marriner… and given that the reds only require a point to, in effect, clinch it and there’ll be an awful lot of cash flying around in umpteen global markets – I’m going to plump for a (probably goalless) draw in that one.
FYI – this will be Manchester United’s 4th game this season under Marriner and they show an impressive 2.333 PPG with a healthy average over performance swing of +1.250 goals per game. This is in contrast to the zero games that Manchester City have had under Andre Marriner this season.
Totally random of course… by the way – does anyone know how to spell Calciopoli; my Italian is a little rusty?
But enough of the murky Mancs and their pet PGMOL – lets check out the markets for our game.
Asian Handicap (betting line) market:
| Home | Handicap | Away |
|---|---|---|
| 2.000 | 1/2 – 0 | 1.900 |
The Under/Over market:
| Over | Handicap | Under |
|---|---|---|
| 2.050 | 2 1/2 | 1.850 |
Let’s have a look at the Referee:
- Full name: Christopher J Foy
- Date of birth: 20-Nov-1962 (Age 50)
- Place of birth: St. Helens, Lancashire
- Resides: Merseyside
- EPL/ECH Referee Since: 2000/2001
- EPL/ECH Games to date: 251
Chris Foy – hang on… did you say potato or potartoe?
It’s Chris Foy again… you remember him:
Good gosh – that is a very poor average score from Foy there and, quite worryingly, we see the game between Stoke and Tottenham in which he appeared to rob Spurs blind to give Stoke all 3 points – but does this mean that he loves Stoke or, more understandably, that he just hates the Tottenham? Alas we don’t have Ref Review data for the other game Stoke played under Foy this season where they lost 1-2 to Fulham so it’s hard to say.
Let’s check out his stats!
Chris Foy has had 16 games for Stoke City consisting of 4 wins, 6 draws and 6 losses.
Stoke City are currently in 24th in Chris Foy’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 1.13 PPG.
In Chris Foy’s personal Handicap Swing League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the EPL/ECH, Stoke City come 25th with an average negative swing of -0.56.
Stoke City are currently in 32nd in Chris Foy’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 2.06 BPM.
In Chris Foy’s personal Fouls Per Booking League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the EPL/ECH, Stoke City come 32nd with an overall average of 5.76 FPB.
Stoke’s performances under Foy are up over the last two seasons and show a slight over-performance. As you can see from the FPB/BPM lines – Chris Foy does appear to punish Stoke quite harshly in the challenge in comparison with their opposition – but given that Stoke are a side that thrive on set pieces, would the number of fouls given against their opposition without a card in 2010/2011 be a bit suspicious give the relative over-performance of Stoke that season?
Above is a seasonal breakdown on how, when and where Stoke City took all their bookings under Chris Foy.
Stoke City’s booking index looks fairly normal in that they take the majority of their cards in the midfield, on average, around the halfway mark.
Above is a seasonal breakdown on how, when and where Stoke City’s opposition took all their bookings under Chris Foy.
Stoke City’s opposition booking index under Chris Foy is unusual in that not only are their very few bookings but also look like they are trending much later, on average, in the match.
Let’s move on now and see how Arsenal performs under the whistle of Chris Foy:
Chris Foy has had 19 games for Arsenal consisting of 16 wins, 2 draws and 1 loss.
Arsenal are currently in 1st in Chris Foy’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 2.63 PPG.
In Chris Foy’s personal Handicap Swing League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the EPL/ECH, Arsenal come 10th with an average positive swing of 0.09.
Arsenal are currently in 2nd in Chris Foy’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 0.84 BPM.
In Chris Foy’s personal Fouls Per Booking League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the EPL/ECH, Arsenal come 6th with an overall average of 11.50 FPB.
First things first RefWatchers – not matter what your feelings of Foy and no matter how many crap calls he’s made that have gone against us you have to take note of the bottom line here – and that is Arsenal has taken 50 points from 19 EPL games under him and that is a pretty good return.
We can also see from the FPB/BPM figures that generally Arsenal gets away with more in the challenge than our opposition although there’s not much in it this season and we are showing something of an under performance from the one and only game that we’ve had Chris Foy this season.
Above is a seasonal breakdown on how, when and where Arsenal took all their bookings under Chris Foy.
Above is a seasonal breakdown on how, when and where Arsenal’s opposition took all their bookings under Chris Foy.
Let’s move on now to check out how Chris Foy performs against selected teams in the EPL:
As we can see, relatively speaking, Stoke are showing a better performance under Chris Foy than Arsenal for the last three seasons… although Arsenal have done consistently well under Chris Foy with regards to points won over the seasons. Tottenham’s figures are interesting in that they were doing really rather well under Chris Foy until about the time that Harry Redknapp took over – then they plummeted… is Chris Foy the ‘anti-Dean’?
The [slightly dodgy] Predictortron gives Stoke City a 0.405952 of a goal advantage…
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