The 10% bias. How refs fix Arsenal over penalties and disallowed goals. The ref review 2 -Who made the mistakes? « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News, supporting the club, the players and the manager
By Walter Broeckx
This article lists the decisions concerning penalties and goals that didn’t go our way and those decisions that did go our way.
So this is just a general list of things and it doesn’t matter if they were decisive at the end of a game for the final score. Just a way of making things a bit clearer and to let you know which decisions I was referring to in my weekly ref reviews and of course in my final ref review of the season.
To be clear, just mentioning them here does not mean that I will list them in my lost/won points table which you will be seeing in a few days. Most of them will but not all!
I also include the name of the ref so we can count how many important things went wrong under a certain ref
Let us start with the decisions that went our way when it comes to goals. So this contains goals we scored and that shouldn’t have counted and also goals that were scored against Arsenal and were wrongly disallowed.
| Game | Ref | Comment | Total Goals |
| Fulham | Foy | How much we would like to see it named goal of the season but the second goal from Nasri will not get my vote. There was an offside in the build up. | 1 |
| Newcastle | Dowd | Well it wasn’t that much Dowd who disallowed a Newcastle goal but it was his assistant who gave an offside which was wrong | 1 |
| TOTAL LUCKY DECISIONS | 2 |
But we should also have a look at the goals we were denied or that have been given to other teams which were wrong.
| Game | Ref | Comment | Total |
| Chelsea | Dean | A not given foul on Song gave the ball to Chelsea and from then on they scored their first goal | 1 |
| Everton | Webb | Webb was so busy with distracting Sagna that he didn’t see that an Everton player was leaning with both arms on Song and pushed him on the floor | 1 |
| Aston Villa | Clattenburg | Clattenburg didn’t see that Carew was in front of Fabianski in an offside position and was interfering with play. And the linesman didn’t signal it. | 1 |
| Tottenham | Dowd | Dowd made a total mess of the first decisions which lead to the penalty for Tottenham. There was no foul from Song on Modric and the free kick should never have been given to Tottenham | 1 |
| Wigan | Probert | I could have mentioned this in the wrong given penalties against Arsenal. There was no foul, just a dive from Nzogbia so it should never have come to a goal for Wigan like this | 1 |
| Everton | Mason | The offside rule a la Mason was wrong. How much the pundits did try their best to turn left in to right or the other way round. The goal should have been cancelled. | 1 |
| Sunderland | Taylor | Arshavin scoring but the assistant giving offside. Our little Russian was onside. | 1 |
| Tottenham | Atkinson | A Robin Van Persie goal was disallowed for offside. Which was wrong | 1 |
| Aston Villa | Oliver | Another goal disallowed from Arsenal for what just looked to be a bit of contact between the striker and the defender | 1 |
| TOTAL UNLUCKY DECISIONS | 9 |
This looks to be a bit of an uneven balance after one season I would say. Let us see if we have been better of with the penalties? Once again I don’t see if this was a game changing decision in this table. Just listing the wrong calls.
Let us once again start with the penalties when Arsenal was lucky. And I will be as generous as I can be in this.
| Game | Ref | Comment | Total |
| Aston Villa | Clattenburg | Villa should have had a penalty | 1 |
| Wolves | Foy | Wolves also should have had a penalty | 1 |
| Blackpool | Mason | And Blackpool also should have gotten a penalty in this game | 1 |
| Tottenham | Atkinson | There should have been another penalty for Tottenham in this game | 1 |
| M Utd | Foy | Generous as I am I will back up the call for a penalty for a foul on Owen and ignore the interference from Berbatov coming from an offside position. | 1 |
| TOTAL LUCKY DECISIONS | 5 |
Okay that is 5 in our favour. Let us check the other way round and see if we could have claimed the odd penalty in our favour? Or did we get a stupid penalty against us? And once again mentioning it here does not mean we would have gotten more points out of the game.
| Game | Ref | Comment | Total |
| Sunderland | Dowd | Penalty for handball not given | 1 |
| West Ham | Jones | A penalty not given | 1 |
| Tottenham | Dowd | A clear push in the back of Song but the ref ignores it | 1 |
| Chelsea | Clattenburg | A clear foul on Van Persie just inside the penalty area but nothing given | 1 |
| Wigan | Probert | A clear trip on Walcott but nothing given and then a clear handball in the wall but again nothing given | 2 |
| Wigan | Friend | Another penalty in our home game this time not given | 1 |
| Newcastle | Dowd | Do I need to explain? | 1 |
| Wolves | Foy | A foul on Arshavin if I remember correct not given | 1 |
| Sunderland | Taylor | A clear push on Arshavin just when he wants to shoot but nothing given | 1 |
| Blackpool | Mason | A clear push in the back of Van Persie this time and nothing given | 1 |
| Liverpool | Mariner | Djourou being held back with both arms and Kuyt playing for keeper when blocking a shot going on goal but both times nothing given. And then the extra extra extra time penalty given. | 3 |
| Bolton | Jones | A clear foul on Walcott not given, a clear foul on Koscielny not given. But on the other hand a nice dive from Sturridge was given for Bolton | 3 |
| M Utd | Foy | Vidic thinking he was Maradonna and getting away with it. Amazing. | 1 |
| Aston Villa | Oliver | A clear foul on Ramsey and nothing given. | 1 |
| TOTAL UNLUCKY DECISIONS | 19 |
Once again in this table it is rather clear to see that we did have a few reasons to complain about certain decisions. We escaped 5 times with a penalty decision but on the other hand we could and should have had 19 penalties more than we have got.
Whether or not it affected our total points is a matter for another article in the coming days. But now I will focus on the ref and see how many times a ref was involved in a wrong decision. And let us see if at the end of the season it evens out with the refs and their decisions when it comes to Arsenal games.
| Ref | Favour Arsenal | Against Arsenal | Total mistakes | + / – |
| Foy | 3 | 2 | 5 | +1 |
| Dowd | 1 | 4 | 5 | -3 |
| Dean | 1 | 1 | -1 | |
| Webb | 1 | 1 | -1 | |
| Clattenburg | 1 | 2 | 3 | -1 |
| Probert | 2 | 2 | -2 | |
| Mason | 1 | 2 | 3 | -1 |
| Taylor | 2 | 2 | -2 | |
| Atkinson | 1 | 1 | 2 | 0 |
| Oliver | 1 | 1 | -1 | |
| Jones | 4 | 4 | -4 | |
| Friend | 1 | 1 | -1 | |
| Mariner | 3 | 3 | -3 | |
| Oliver | 1 | 1 | -1 | |
| TOTAL | 7 | 28 | 35 | -21 |
| % | 20% | 80% |
So the only ref that can say that his major decisions on goals and penalties did not have any affect at the end of the season is Atkinson. And we also have one ref who has made a few mistakes but we got the benefit at the end of the season. This was Foy. I hope he doesn’t get in to trouble with this.
But on the other side of the coin we must see at decisions going against us. And all the other refs mistakes went all against us at the end of the season. And in this table Jones is standing first with the most mistakes against us and not one mistake in our favour. We also see the high score of Dowd and Mariner in this table.
And then I looked if there was any difference between the scores of the given penalties and the correct and the wrong decisions and this compared to the total decisions on penalties for and against us.
| Penalties in Arsenal games this season | |||||
| Given | Other/not correct | Total | % correct | % not correct | |
| For | 7 | 17 | 24 | 29,17% | 70,83% |
| Against | 9 | 7 | 16 | 56,25% | 43,75% |
And then you see that almost 60% of the decisions on penalties against Arsenal are correct. But when it comes to the times we should have got a penalty this goes down to just under 30%. So these numbers do give the impression that the other teams get more things in their favour compared to Arsenal. Their number is almost the double of ours! So when Arsenal players get tripped in the penalty area and should get a penalty only 30% of the penalties are given by the refs.
And then I did the same for the goal decisions. To compare the given goals and the disallowed, not given or wrongly given and see if we can see if there is a difference between what we get and what the other teams have been getting.
| Goals in Arsenal games this season | |||||
| Given | Other/not correct | Total | % correct | % not correct | |
| For | 72 | 19 | 91 | 79,12% | 20,88% |
| Against | 43 | 5 | 48 | 89,58% | 10,42% |
And also in this table we see that goals are easily given against us but that we get more goals disallowed or not given than the other teams. We only get 80% (8 out of 10 goals) of the goals we should have been given and the other teams get 90% (9 out of 10 goals).
So the main conclusion from all this is for me that we don’t get as many penalties as the other teams, we get more goals disallowed that should have counted than the other teams.
Also in this series…
Half the penalties in Arsenal games were wrongly given this season!