RefWatch – Arsenal Vs Norwich City (05/05/2012)

• Referee: Anthony Taylor
• Assistant 1: Simon Bennett
• Assistant 2: Sian Massey
• 4th Official: Lee Probert

Good morning stat-fans and welcome to RefWatch…

If you don’t mind I will start with a flashback to last week’s RefWatch:

The most interesting of the other fixtures, from a Ref Watch and Arsenal perspective, are for the two teams snapping at our heels:

• Wigan Athletic v Newcastle United
• Bolton Wanderers v Tottenham Hotspur

Interestingly, both of these two fixtures are refereed by Mike Dean (he is a busy boy)… now – those of you paying attention will be aware that there is a rather interesting correlation between Mike Dean and Harry Redknapp’s Tottenham as in both the flat (official) match statistics and the Untold referee statistics – Tottenham are heavily favoured by Mr. Dean.

Which begs the obvious question – just how did Mike Dean get these two fixtures [that directly affect Tottenham’s run in] that could well decide the 4th place spot?

And thus is came to pass that Tottenham now lie in fourth place – 1 point behind Arsenal. But wait – there’s more as this week there are some more rather interesting appointments from Mike and the mechanics at the PGMOL… interestingly though the appointments announcements were delayed nearly 24 hours and, with no explanation, were released at exactly the same time as the eyes of the British sports press were fixated on Roy Hodgson’s first press conference as England manager.

What a remarkable ‘under the radar’ coincidence eh – do they have something to hide I wonder!?

Even more of a coincidence are some of the aforementioned interesting appointments… well – when I say ‘some’ I actually mean just the most important ones and when I say ‘interesting’ I actually mean gob-smackingly retarded:

Quiz time dear reader – let’s see if you’ve been concentrating and/or tuning into my twitter feed – take a look at the above and regardless of the form book between the teams, don your tin-foil thinking caps and make a guess which team might have an edge based purely on the ‘totally random’ appointment of the match officials by the PGMOL?

Put your answers in the comments section – fabulous prizes to be won!

Let’s check out the Asian Handicap (betting line) market:

The Under/Over market:

Let’s have a look at the Referee:

• Full name: Anthony Taylor
• Date of birth: 20-Oct-1978 (Age 34)
• Place of birth: Wythenshawe
• Resides: Manchester
• EPL/ECH Referee Since: 2005/2006
• EPL/ECH Games to date: 87

Anthony Taylor – Distinctly average

It’s Anthony Taylor again… you remember him:

Let’s check out his stats!

Anthony Taylor has had 1 games for Arsenal consisting of 0 wins, 1 draw and 0 losses.

And that was the home match last season between Arsenal and Sunderland (2011-03-05) which ended goalless. So not much data – but we do have a Ref Review [old style] right here:

Arsenal 0 – 0 Sunderland

Lo and behold, he was fucking awful – a ‘nailed on’ total, utter and proper c%*t [technical term] to us that day.

In stark contrast we can see the Ref Review of the game Anthony Taylor had for Norwich City against Blackburn:

Norwich City 3 – 3 Blackburn Rovers

Where Anthony cooks up a last minute penalty for Norwich despite the fact that it was Ollsson who was fouled in the penalty area and was penalised for having the ball land on his hand as he was appealing for a foul.

Nice one Riley – what an amazing coincidence that you should randomly pick Anthony Taylor for this game along with all the other amazing coincidences in this week’s match official appointments.

For what it’s worth – here are Norwich City’s figures under Anthony Taylor:

There are loads of zero-point intersects here (denoting no matches for that team under Taylor that season) which is slightly confusing – but what we can see is that Liverpool and Tottenham are strong performers, as are Manchester City and Manchester United. Arsenal show a distinct under-performance (as to be expected from our one game that season) and Norwich show an average performance that has dropped off the boil a bit this season.

The Predictortron gives Arsenal a 0.000000 of a goal disadvantage… but we have to remember that Norwich are running on empty and have absolutely nothing to play for having secured Premier League survival already.

If I were Wenger – I’m consider brokering a few deals with Paul Lambert over possible player loans from our library of bright young things prior to this match – just in case Taylor gives Carte blanche to Norwich to hoof us all over the field and stop any attack with a cynical foul.

By DogFace

Published with permission from Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade.