Sunday, August 26th, 2012 « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. 800,000 visits last month
Untold Arsenal on Twitter @UntoldArsenal
- Referee: Lee Mason
- Assistant 1: Simon Long
- Assistant 2: Ron Ganfield
- 4th Official: Howard Webb
Good morning stat-fans and welcome to RefWatch. Today we face Stoke City and this is never an easy game. Stoke are a team who play a brand of football and play it very efficiently. It is a game of statistics and percentages, it is not a game of free flowing football but a game where n balls lumped at x big man will produce y goals… it is also a style of football that employs a certain gamesmanship with regards to the rules.
We can sneer at it, but it is effective and has seen them stay up in the Premier League where others have fallen.
This makes the choice of referee very important in that Stoke will take full advantage of a weak referee or one that is swayed by the intimidating atmosphere of the home crowd.
Let’s have a look at the markets.
Asian Handicap (betting line) market:
| Home | Handicap | Away |
|---|---|---|
| 2.000 | 1/4 – 0 | 1.900 |
The Under/Over market:
| Over | Handicap | Under |
|---|---|---|
| 1.825 | 2 1/4 | 2.075 |
Let’s have a look at the Referee:
- Full name: Lee S. Mason
- Date of birth: 29-Oct-1971 (Age 41)
- Place of birth: Bolton
- Resides: Lancashire
- EPL Referee Since: 2002/2003
- EPL Games to date: 189
Lee Mason
It’s Lee Mason again… check out his match reviews:
Let’s check out his stats!
Lee Mason has had 22 games for Stoke City consisting of 8 wins, 6 draws and 8 losses.
Stoke City are currently in 18th in Lee Mason’s personal Points Per Game League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the EPL, with an average of 1.36 PPG.
In Lee Mason’s personal Handicap Swing League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the EPL, Stoke City come 4th with an average positive swing of 0.75.
Stoke City are currently in 21st in Lee Mason’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 1.91 BPM.
In Lee Mason’s personal Fouls Per Booking League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the EPL, Stoke City come 22nd with an overall average of 6.48 FPB.
Lee Mason’s figures against Stoke of late have been very favourable, Stoke have shown clear over performances and a good points return over the last two seasons. Be booking figures seem fairly consistent in that, barring the 2010/2011 season, Stoke have seen more bookings per foul than their opposition, which is probably about right for a team that seeks to find the limits of the rules as applied by the official on the day.
Above is a seasonal breakdown on how, when and where Stoke City took all their bookings under Lee Mason.
Above is a seasonal breakdown on how, when and where Stoke City’s opposition took all their bookings under Lee Mason.
It is encouraging that there is a trend to earlier bookings from Lee Mason against Stoke City in the defence and the midfield. It would be nice to see Lee Mason clamp down on any over physical play from to off today.
Lee Mason has had 9 games for Arsenal consisting of 5 wins, 2 draws and 2 losses.
Arsenal are currently in 4th in Lee Mason’s personal Points Per Game League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the EPL, with an average of 1.89 PPG.
In Lee Mason’s personal Handicap Swing League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the EPL, Arsenal come 11th with an average positive swing of 0.14.
Arsenal are currently in 29th in Lee Mason’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 2.22 BPM.
In Lee Mason’s personal Fouls Per Booking League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the EPL, Arsenal come 31st with an overall average of 4.50 FPB.
Our history with Lee Mason has been historically quite poor although over the last two seasons we have mildly over performed and seen a reasonable return of points.
Above is a seasonal breakdown on how, when and where Arsenal took all their bookings under Lee Mason.
Above is a seasonal breakdown on how, when and where Arsenal’s opposition took all their bookings under Lee Mason.
There has been some consistency in the booking figures for our opposition but we can see a clear drop off for Arsenal’s bookings last season… which is nice.
Let’s move on now to check out how Lee Mason performs against selected teams in the EPL:
There doesn’t seem to be any consistent performers for Lee Mason in the Premier League for the teams selected… Manchester United seems to do very well and Stoke are on something of an erratic upward trend. Arsenal have had as up and down a time of it under Lee Mason as Stoke so this is a hard one to call. We are the better team, but Stoke will do what Stoke do best and that will be very hard to break down with a new team that is bedding into the league. This could very well be a ‘welcome to the EPL’ match for the new boys.
The Predictortron gives Stoke City a half of a goal advantage – but I wouldn’t put much faith in that – the one positive is that currently Bet365 are offering the best odds on a Stoke win – it will be worth (with the close relationship they have with Stoke City) monitoring that market in the run up to kick off to see how they play their hand.