RefWatch – Swansea City Vs Arsenal (15/01/2012 – 16:00) « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade
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- Referee: Michael Oliver
- Assistant 1: Peter Kirkup
- Assistant 2: Mike Mullarkey
- 4th Official: Lee Probert
Good morning stat-fans and welcome to RefWatch… as always – I am pushed for time but I haven’t been wasting it. You might be interested to know that I am working with Walter on some data-sets that are going to prove rather interesting I think… in fact – pretty soon we might actually see RefReview data integrated into RefWatch analysis – exciting times.
I have also been deep in the database and rewired a few things and generally nailed my shit down in prep for the next great leap forward, created some interesting views and produced some lovely graphs – followers of my Twitter account have already had a taste of these and they should still be there in my timeline in case you are interested.
…Let’s move on from my Twitter time line to the Betting Line…
Asian Handicap (betting line) market:
| Home | Handicap | Away |
|---|---|---|
| 1.800 | 3/4 – 0 | 2.100 |
The Under/Over market:
| Over | Handicap | Under |
|---|---|---|
| 2.050 | 2 1/2 | 1.850 |
We should bear in mind that this game is the 4pm kick-off on a Super Duper Sunday which means, you guessed it, maximum liquidity and maximum motivation for uncharacteristic under-performances, refereeing ‘mistakes’ and unusual betting patterns – or indeed quite normal betting patterns and unusual results… resulting in happy bookies.
This is what I believe Wenger is talking about when he suggests that some teams fix the schedule (via media distributers) for their advantage – yes, an extra day’s rest is important but what is also important is not playing every game on your run in on a Sunday afternoon exposing it to a black market with over a billion quid of liquidity… of course he can’t say that – but I’m sure he is well aware.
Let’s have a look at the Referee:
- Full name: Michael Oliver
- Date of birth: 20-Feb-1985 (Age 27)
- Place of birth: Ashington
- Resides: Northumberland
- EPL/ECH Referee Since: 2007/2008
- EPL/ECH Games to date: 69
Michael Oliver – Sponsored by “prominent Malaysian entrepreneurs” Tune Group
It’s Michael Oliver again… you remember him:
Let’s check out his stats!
Michael Oliver has had 3 games for Swansea City consisting of 2 wins, 1 draw and 0 losses.
Swansea City are currently in 2nd in Michael Oliver’s personal Points Per Game League (for teams with a minimum of 3 matches played), for matches in the EPL/ECH, with an average of 2.33 PPG.
Swansea City are currently in 2nd in Michael Oliver’s personal Booking’s Per Match League (for teams with a minimum of 3 matches played), for matches in the EPL/ECH, with an overall average of 0.33 BPM.
In Michael Oliver’s personal Fouls Per Booking League (for teams with a minimum of 3 matches played), for matches in the EPL/ECH, Swansea City come 2nd with an overall average of 28.00 FPB.
Ahh ha – check it out, my database upgrade to include Championship data pays off as we see that Michael Oliver has a history with Swansea City going back to the 2008/2009 season… actually – quite a happy history – look at that fat blue line of success and, with being allowed to commit 28 fouls per booking, barely a booking in sight… that said this is only going back 3 games and some of the data here (i.e. bookings in the Championship) I’m going to have to review for it’s accuracy.
The below graphs use a more reliable data source with regards to the bookings breakdown – it’s far more complex but I think I’m going to have to migrate some of this to my other views during the week… more work for me!
Above is a seasonal breakdown on how, when and where Swansea City took all their bookings under Michael Oliver.
As we can see Swansea have taken no bookings this season under Oliver and it looks like they got some in the defence in the previous season averaging out at around the 40 minute mark.
Above is a seasonal breakdown on how, when and where Swansea City’s opposition took all their bookings under Michael Oliver.
Swansea City’s opposition have been fairly consistently booked throughout the defence and midfield over all of the three seasons he has taken charge.
Let’s move on now and see how Arsenal fare under the whistle of Michael Oliver…
Michael Oliver has had 3 games for Arsenal consisting of 1 win, 0 draws and 2 losses.
Arsenal are currently in 17th in Michael Oliver’s personal Points Per Game League (for teams with a minimum of 3 matches played), for matches in the EPL/ECH, with an average of 1.00 PPG.
In Michael Oliver’s personal Handicap Swing League (for teams with a minimum of 3 matches played), for matches in the EPL/ECH, Arsenal come 17th with an average negative swing of -0.25.
Arsenal are currently in 18th in Michael Oliver’s personal Booking’s Per Match League (for teams with a minimum of 3 matches played), for matches in the EPL/ECH, with an overall average of 1.67 BPM.
In Michael Oliver’s personal Fouls Per Booking League (for teams with a minimum of 3 matches played), for matches in the EPL/ECH, Arsenal come 18th with an overall average of 7.20 FPB.
Again – it’s only 3 games worth of data for Michael Oliver over two seasons but, with 2 losses and a win, it’s averaging out at a point per game – which may be a bit of a result if you are, say Derby County, but it’s pretty poor for a team like Arsenal. This season, however we have seen a solid over performance combined with 3 points when we comfortably beat West Brom 3-0.
The thing is though that I can’t really recall Michael Oliver being that bad – nothing specific – so maybe we just played a bit shit for the two games we lost?
Above is a seasonal breakdown on how, when and where Arsenal took all their bookings under Michael Oliver.
Wow – look at that – one booking to our midfield in the 2010/2011 season and he would have had a full house!
Above is a seasonal breakdown on how, when and where Arsenal’s opposition took all their bookings under Michael Oliver.
Again – we see very similar booking patterns for our opposition, all looks very average in the 2010/2011 season but with no bookings as yet this season.
Let’s move on now to check out how Michael Oliver performs against selected teams in the EPL:
Now what is entirely interesting here is that in the 2010/2011 season, all the ‘big’ teams did incredibly badly under Michael Oliver… all of them that is except Manchester City who have nearly taken the roof off with a big over-performance of +3 goals. Since then Arsenal and Manchester United’s figures have recovered but Liverpool are still performing poorly.
As we can see, Swansea City are solid and consistent performers under Michael Oliver and have not as yet shown an underperformace.
The Predictortron gives Swansea City a -0.500000 of a goal disadvantage… and this comes close to the betting line of 3/4 ball; so this could be a tough one – but also remember that this fantastic gambling opportunity (otherwise known as ‘the beautiful game’ to you and me) is being played at 16:00 on a Super Sunday – so expect the unexpected.