Untold RefWatch – Manchester United v Arsenal (13/12/2010 20:00) « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade

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RefWatch – Manchester United v Arsenal (13/12/2010 20:00)

By DogFace

• Referee:              Howard Webb
• Assistant 1:         Dave Bryan
• Assistant 2:         Darren Cann
• 4th Official:        Phil Dowd

Good afternoon stat-fans and welcome to an all new stat-tastic RefWatch.  Today we have the pleasure of Howard Webb (again) and, as we’ve already slagged him off in a previous RefWatch, I’m not going to go into any more detail than his profile, picture and statistics:

Much more than this, I did it my way…

• Full name:                          Howard Melton Webb
• Date of birth:                     14 July 1971 (age 39)
• Place of birth:                   Rotherham (South Yorkshire)
• EPL Referee Since:          2003/2004
• EPL Games to date:         190

It seems that the general opinion about Howard Webb (on the web) is that he has a Manchester United bias – this has arisen from a few high profile games in which he has been seen to be active in tilting the pitch in the Red Devil’s favour… the Manchester United Vs Tottenham Hotspur (25/04/2009) match springs immediately to mind where a few extraordinary decisions saw Spurs “throw away” a commanding half time lead – but that was fine as it was Tottenham; in fact it was quite funny – ha ha.  On the whole though, I have never really seen Webb’s refereeing slants as being that obvious… as they say in the gambling dens in downtown Tokyo – “Wah lah, he’s a bit the tricky one that Webby one hor, he like snake in jam-jar lah!”

Ahem, for the uninitiated, here is the key to the graphics:

o        English Premier League

o        The ‘sample group’ or number of matches played in the specified Season under the specified Referee.

o        The Average Fouls Per Booking, be it Arsenal (ARS) or Manchester United (MNU), played in the specified Season under the specified Referee.

o        The Average Fouls Per Booking for all Opposition sides played in the specified Season under the specified Referee.

o        The Average Points Per Game for the specified team, played in the specified Season under the specified Referee.

o        The Average Asian Handicap ‘swing’ played in the specified Season under the specified Referee (this is the deviation, be it positive or negative from the bookmaker assigned betting line or ‘handicap’).

*The FPB figures are based on what the referee defines as a foul during the course of a match – as we know from experience these figures do not reflect exactly what happened on the day but, given a wide enough sample group, we can hope (baring an extreme negative/positive bias that is hard to measure from the data) that they roughly indicate the form for that season.

So without further ado – onto the data:

As you can see from the graph, on average Manchester United have never over performed massively against the handicap and in the 2007/2008 season they showed a slight underperformance.  He does appear to let them get away with more in the challenge than their opposition, until this season, as you can see – this was the North West Derby with an exceedingly poor Liverpool (19/09/2010) in which Manchester Utd. won 3-2.  Manchester United’s current EPL record under Howard Webb stands at 24 matches comprising of 15 wins, 3 draws and 6 losses… many of you will not be surprised that Manchester United come in at 1^st in Webby’s personal Points Per Game league table with an overall average of 2 PPG.  More surprising [to you cynical lot] is that the Mancs rock in at 10^th place in Webb’s EPL AH Swing league table with a positive overall swing of 0.21 of a goal per match.  So all in all – the Murky Mancs can have no complaints with him being appointed in this [what could be] crucial fixture.

Let’s have a look now at Howard Webb’s seasonal EPL statistics for Arsenal:

Right… up until the 2008/2009 season it’s fair to say that Howard Webb was a total and proper c&^t to us – he consistently penalised us harshly (i.e. not in our favour) in the challenge as the FPB, AH Swing and, ultimately, PPG figures above will testify.  Since then though things seem rather normal in that the FPB figures for us and our opposition under Webb have fallen into line with each other and at a rate that seems agreeable.  Since then we have seen a steady positive climb in both our average swing against the handicap and our PPG per season… even with this I still get that gut feeling that Webb is a twat and we should fear him for this match – don’t ask me why… with any luck the gambling public will feel this too and lump all their hard earned on the mancs backs to weigh them down.  We have played 20 EPL matches under Howard Webb comprising of 8 wins, 8 draws and 4 losses with an overall average of 1.6 PPG – this is not good, obviously, and explains why we languish in 6^th place in Howard Webb’s personal EPL PPG league.  Our overall AH Swing position in Howard Webb’s personal EPL handicap performance league aren’t much better – we come in at 16^th on that, with an overall negative swing of -0.07.  But as I have said – these are overall numbers and don’t indicate the trends as shown in the graph [above].

Let’s rock on to the 4^th official… let’s see – ahh, we have Phil Dowd AGAIN?!  Let’s check out how the Murky Manc’s do with him… can’t be any worse than us can it surely as we all know that all referee’s love Manchester United do they not?!?

Excellent news, Phil Dowd hates Manchester United more than us (or at least that’s what I deduce from the statistics) – he may not hate them of course… he might just be really very ‘unlucky’ for them.  Either way – great!  Just take a look at those AH Swing numbers; they have never had a positive swing under Dowd ever.  The FPB figures are rather jolly too – with this season seeing the opposition FPB smashing through the roof at 27 to the Manc’s 8.  Manchester United have had 14 games (EPL) under Dowd comprising of 7 wins, 2 draws and 5 losses – this gives them an overall average of 1.64        PPG and puts them at 7^th place in Dowd’s overall PPG league table.  In Phil Dowd’s personal overall AH Swing EPL league table Manchester United rock in at an incredible 25^th place with an average negative swing of -1 goal per game… i.e. with Phil Dowd as the referee for Manchester United games, they are as good as a goal down before kickoff.

Let’s move on now and breeze over Dowd’s familiar figures for Arsenal:

We’ve seen this before so nothing new – we were doing OK with Dowd until this season where we saw a total about turn – after 2 matches we are already seeing a negative swing of -0.88 of a goal; to put this in perspective – this is actually worse than Manchester United’s swing under Dowd for this season of -0.75.  In the 15 EPL games Arsenal have played under Dowd we have won 9, drawn 4 and lost 2 averaging an overall 2.07 PPG – this places us 2^nd in Dowd’s overall PPG league table.  We reside in 12^th place in Dowd’s overall EPL AH Swing league table with a positive average swing of 0.16 of a goal per game.

Now – this is all rather interesting… and it lead me to do a little bit more investigation into the curious case of Phil Dowd as I noticed that we weren’t the only team in the top half of the table to underperform of late.  To cut a long story short I did a bit of jiggery pokery and pivoted a AH Swing results table on a team/season basis against the select group of referees and came up with an ALL NEW GRAPH!  Calm yourselves… I know it’s an exciting moment, let’s take a deep breath, count to ten and have a look:

This wondrous graph shows actual team performance against the handicap for a given ref – I have only included certain teams here to cut down on the number of wiggly lines but as you can see there is a bit of a trend in that all teams that are posing a competitive threat to Manchester City’s seasonal goals have taken a strange negative turn – whereas, quite remarkably and conversely, Manchester City have soared from their shocking low of -3.75 goals per game and over performed under Phil Dowd to the tune of 1.63 goals per match this season already… and oh my – haven’t Aston Villa fallen out of favour?!  Come to think of it – I and a few like minded chums came to the conclusion that Dowd was “on the draw” big time during the second half of the North London derby… which would make sense – just a shame Tottenham nicked it.

Please feel free to comment and speculate as to what the reasons for this may be… to me this sort of thing is part of the reason why the EPL is the most open and ‘best ever’ title race this season.  It seems to me that there is an informal handicapping system in place that will even up (to a certain extent) the gap in quality across the table – you know, a bit like horse racing where they hang weights on the best ones to randomise the result make it a close finish so the bookies can maximise their profit.  Or is that just me being cynical?

Howard Webb’s EPL pivot chart is really funny too… you wanna look? OK then, to make it fair – I’ll include the same teams as above:

Notice anything remotely out of character in the run up to the World Cup there?  In the 2009/2010 season Howard Webb’s stats are textbook perfect with the teams looking for European football performing as expected – although, this season, it seems that it has all gone back to business as usual for Webby… although, to be fair, the season isn’t over yet.

Makes you think doesn’t it?

Right now – armed with all those facts and figures what exactly can we expect from tonight’s game?  If I were a betting man I would say it was going to be tight… if I were a cynic I would say that the mug money will swing it either way – and if I were a mug I would say that this is going to be ‘a cracker’ for the neutral – lump on!

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