Here’s a quote from resident BT refereeing ‘expert’ Peter Walton.

He admits that refs referee players based on perceived reputation. Which when you think about it just exacerbates the problem every time.
‘Harry Kane doesn’t get many red cards so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and not red card him here’ repeat repeat

Do the opposite for Xhaka or Luiz

That is *%^@*** outrageous.

It seems outrageous but it may be a natural human reaction? Of course, ideally they should look at each offence independently and book a player if the specific offence just committed actually warrants a yellow card.

But I am willing to accept that a player’s reputation can be in the back of a referee’s mind and however much he doesn’t want to be influenced by the player’s reputation, and knows he shouldn’t be, it cannot be easy to simply eradicate that reputation from his mind?

Didn’t they used to ban the previous criminal record of someone on trial in court being brought up by the prosecuting barrister in front of the jury? I’m sure I’ve seen documentaries say it was. If that’s right and it was, I’m sure the rationale was to avoid the jury thinking the defendant has done it before so he or she must be guilty this time. They wanted the jury to reach their decision on the case being heard on the strength of the evidence before them, rather than the defendant’s past record.

But it really isn’t that easy with referees. They all read papers and watch programmes like Match of the Day, so will inevitably be aware of a player’s reputation. It is not like that for jury members apart from very rare occasions like already convicted murderers being tried for a later new murder. Someone on a jury probably won’t have heard of a defendant for a lesser crime so won’t know if he or she has done the same thing before.

For example, I am certain Xhaka has suffered from his reputation, whether it’s fair or not, and received yellow cards for offences that Kane would get away with. Of course it isn’t ideal or what should happen. But referees don’t live in a bubble cut off from news reports and the media. So is it that surprising when it happens? Perhaps it even makes it understandable?

Even as the forums resident ref basher I still think there is some context to these sorts of stats that link number of fouls to number of cards. As we are aware we have some players who commit very clear and obvious yellows. Like Xhaka making one foul a game but it is a clear shirt pull.
However I would also say there is such a disparity in the stats for us vs other teams that is does feel like we are more harshly treated. You only have to watch any weekend of football to see most teams being allowed some leniency where we are treated with the full force of the rules

Mourinho allegedly unimpressed by Maitland-Niles at Roma.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football ... dium=email

Referees in all sports are known to be biased. That said, the better you are the less bad referees can affect you. I am personally convinced a few referees (Reilly for one) had it out for us especially against Man Utd but other teams even below us. However, we played at such a high level, it limited its effect (save a few big games like Rooney's dive).

Question. Had their been VAR in 2004 would we have been unbeaten and would we have had our streak?

Did a very quick analysis of run ins for the 5 teams battling for 4th place.
Home games in blue text, away games in red text.
hard games (v top 3) in green background
medium difficulty (9th to 13th) in orange background
easy games 14th and below in yellow background

at the bottom are the head to head games between the 5.

All 5 teams have to play everton and liverpool so you could in theory remove them from any difficulty analysis

Arsenal are the only team with all of the other top 4 candidates to play

From that it looks to me as if Spurs have the easiest run in

People will point to the Pires penalty being over turned by VAR, but that was the 40th minute of that game so still plenty of time to score the equaliser. I can't recall any other tight decisions in games for us that we drew so in theory we might have lost.

I always point out to people in that unbeaten season that Arsenal didn't have to rely on any late equalisers to scrape through a game undefeated. The latest minute in a match we were behind was the 68th minute v spurs at home - we turned it around with goals in the 69th and 79th minute to beat them 2-1. So we were never even losing a match going in to the final 20 minutes of any game that season

It wouldn't surprise me if Mourinho goes on one of his infamous self destruction crusades and gets sacked at the end of the season. Roma are 8th.

It's amazing his credibility has lasted so long.

That is a pretty big sample. It's hard to imagine that it can be explained by chance or any other intervening factor, such as Arsenal tending to commit more bad fouls, or being more prone to dissent, diving, or timewasting. 50% more reds per foul than any other team is surely just too big an anomaly to explain. It just doesn't make sense.

Sending younger players on loan to a club managed by Mourinho should be an obvious no no.

Wouldn’t trust the bloke for toffee

I would NEVER, EVER send a young player to Mourinho. And I would NEVER send a player to Mourinho. Subtle difference but the fact remains, Mourinho has a history of turning great confident players into average, doubtful players (Pogba, Mata, etc) under his tutelege.

Exactly. The pires penalty was in the 28th minute against Pompey. Not Man Utd, not Liverpool, not Chelsea, but Pompey. Decent but not great and at that time, the gulf in class was so wide you needed Moses and a staff struck to the ground to cross it.

If anything our streak would have extended (Rooney). My assumption it would have went way past 49, well into the 50s. Possibly 60s.

The trouble is, should games against relegation strugglers at this point of the season be seen as easy? For example, if anyone still has a game to come against Burnley, easy is the last word I’d use to describe it.

It seems fair to perceive relegation strugglers as having the worst players. But when they’re fighting for their Premiership lives, can they be seen as easy opponents?

If Mike Riley had reffed the 50th game fairly our unbeaten streak would have lasted until 54 games, we lost 2-1 to Liverpool in the 55th game (that horrible Neil Mellor last minute strike)
We came 2nd with 83 points that year including being robbed of 3 points away to Man U and giving up in the final game and losing to Birminham as we couldn't finish anywhere other than 2nd. We also drew twice with Chelsea - who to be fair would have been very hard to beat with 95 points and only 15 goals conceded and only an Anelka penalty stopped them also being invincible

For Arsenal though I'm not sure we can correlate fouls to reds because so many of our reds have been technical infringements rather than accumulation of naughty fouls.
Arteta's 15 reds have been
4 for denying a clear goal-scoring opportunity (Luiz x 3 and Xhaka)
1 for GK handling outside his box (Leno)
2 for violent conduct (Pépé and Xhaka)
3 for serious foul play (Xhaka, Aubameyang, Nketiah)
5 for 2 yellows (2xGabriel, Martinelli, Partey and ceballos)
I would say with most of these red cards I could point to an identical incident that wasn't given a red, even if ex-refs could technically justify every single one. The more interesting list would be for people to be able to point out all the times an Arsenal player was incredibly lucky to stay on the pitch - where we were given the final warning or benefit of the doubt.

Is it stated in the rules that players should be booked for an accumulation of fouls that aren’t on their own a bookable offence? If so, how many is it and are referees supposed to count the number of fouls each player commits?

Yes, there is obviously an institutional problem with the refereeing - there can be no other explanation. We are clearly not that more highly aggressive, cynical or ill-behaved than other teams. No wonder Arsene used to hold training matches of 10 v 11. Sad thing is it will not change as nobody gives a toss other than Arsenal fans.

I just love Henry Winters description of McTominay. Hits the mark.

Someone has worked out if all the teams chasing top 4 had the same equivalent results they did against the teams they have left to play this season then Arsenal would finish 4th on 65 points, man u 64, spurs 63, west ham 61 and wolves 57.

So all we have to do is match last years results..... and hope everyone else does the same!

Thanks for that fixture graphic Rich.
I think there are going to be a lot of twists , turns and surprises.
Who expected spurs to lose to southampton and wolves at home but beat city away.
Some games will not go to plan.
Pointless trying to predict because while some matches will go as expected there will be surprises.
I just hope we can keep our cool and rack up as many points as we can.
Thursday is going to be tough and they will be extra motivated because of our supposed 'extra celebrations'.
In turn i hope their foolish complaints will serve to motivate us as well.

It will all end up where it ends I suppose. It wouldn't surprise too many people if it came down to the last game. No matter what though, we'll be in Europe, the only question is are we going to play on Tuesday or Wednesday nights or only on Thursdays.

Politics and sport. Hadn't realized the final was there, but I haven't paid any attention to the CL proper.

https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/60474920
Ukraine crisis: Uefa likely to move Champions League final from St Petersburg in Russia

Kop that Putin !

That’s what you get for the invasion !

Bet he regrets his behaviour now eh.

What next ? Let’s close the Vodka ice bar in London! Take that ruskis! We will not negotiate !

yes, that is a good point, its always in flux what can be described as an easy game or hard game

it is probably easier to target an amount of points we think we'll get and need. Beat the other 4 in the race and we'll do it I think. Those 4 games need to be a minimum of 2 wins and 2 draws to keep us in pole position

I doubt they'd close the Vodka bar because it would actually inconvenience them somewhat.

I'm amused by the "Western aggression" school of though that is prominent among certain anti-American-by-default lefties.

The reality is that the "West" couldn't organise the proverbial piss-up when it come to international relations. The yanks are not interested (for good reason) and the rest are constitutionally incapable of agreeing with each other about anything, let alone when it might cause an iota of inconvenience.

He's exactly right.

If you pull a shirt in the 1st minute you get booked, if you then commit 2 more fouls you are warned 'one more and you're off'
However put that the other way round, you commit two fouls and then pull a shirt so are booked, the ref shouldn't wipe the 2 previous fouls from the totting up process because the 'one more' is a yellow card in isolation and shouldn't count in the accumulation process

I doubt the rules are prescriptive to equate numbers of fouls equaling a yellow - in fact I'm almost certain they wouldn't. You do often see refs point to various parts of the pitch when they book a player for what might be regarded as a non yellow card foul in isolation - the ref is demonstrating the totting up. But this gets applied differently depending on the type of foul I think. For example I think strikers get away with the totting up process far more than central midfielders. A striker continually being called for free kicks when going up for headers against centre-backs will probably be allowed 4-5 of those before a yellow even comes in to the mind of the ref. Someone doing what McTominey did v Leeds, basically charging around the middle of the pitch fouling everyone usually drags more attention in the totting up process. In some ways I don't mind that because an innocuous trip 5 yards from your opponents goal isn't the same as that same trip happening 5 yards outside your own box when you're under pressure. So I think refs do have to use their judgement when applying a totting up process - it is something they often fail to do properly though - McTominey being the most recent case in point.

What a start by Vlahovic goal in first thirty seconds

Assuming FC Zenit side will travel to Seville to play Real Betis in
the EL Thursday, invasion or not. Being Zenit is a Russian side.

Well I can tell you something for nothing Decaf ..... all this posturing and grandstanding by the West is going to hurt Europe a hell of a lot more than Russia .

Russia has some very Big Boys backing them India , Saudi Arabia , China , Brazil , Iran

All this Ukraine bollocks ....is a distraction; designed to take American minds off Biden's abysmal performance at home [ and of course to sell their own LPG ]

Couldn't agree more with you Kiwi. Biden is trying to show that US is still in control of world affairs. Wake up USA, you no longer have as much pull as previously. Not especially with Presidents like Trump and now Biden.

Hopng the CL keeps Man Utd and Chelsea busy without them winning the thing.

Putin's expansionism has got absolutely nothing to do with America! Except that he has calculated that the yanks are in no position to effectively oppose him and so he can get away with it. The same applies to China, Saudi, India, and Brazil. They are doing what they are doing because they can get away with it. It is the most ridiculous tail wagging dog exercise to think that the yanks have somehow riled them up.

The last thing Biden needs is a demonstration of how ineffective Western Power has become. That is all that can happen here. The US cannot act unilaterally against Russia (and Biden won't--a Republican might be mad enough to), and his European partner cannot get their act together.

As you note, Biden's domestic agenda is on the rocks, not because of incompetence but because the impossibillty of getting anything meaningful done with a split senate.

Biden isn't terribly impressive. But he's not stupid. He's been pushed into a corner where he has to say 'boo' to Russia and it isn't a good look for him.

I'm appalled at the misinformation that the alternative media peddles, and how shamelessly they change their position when events prove them wrong.

I love this photo. Simply LOVE IT!

Good stat here. Saka has started against 23 different teams in the Premier league and has scored or assisted against 20 of them. I think him and Emile Smith Rowe are starting to get a much better goals and assist output and generally far better than similar players at the same age. Quite often good young midfielders find goals come a bit later in their career. That they came through the academy is only even better for that connection with the fans

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