Untold Arsenal has a team of qualified referees who have reviewed more than 40% of the EPL games from last season. The reviews themselves were based on full match video footage with the advantage of video technology features such as slow motion and pause.

By reviewing those 155 games we have made a database of more than 7000 decisions that have been judged by our panel of dedicated and qualified referees.

The numbers you will see are based on those decisions and those reviewed games.

In this article, we focus on the most important decisions made by referees this past season. The decisions about red cards, penalties and goals. I think nobody will disagree when I say that these are the most important decisions that can directly and openly have an affect on the outcome of a game.  Those of you who are referees or have been referees in the past will know that the “other” decisions that have been taken care of in an earlier article can also show something. But there are other decisions wherein the impact is not clearly visible. The decisions discussed in this article reveal that the outcome is more clear to see.

BURTON UPON TRENT, ENGLAND – AUGUST 01: Referee Howard Webb in action during the Pre-Season Friendly match between Burton Albion and Leicester City at the Pirelli Stadium on August 1, 2012 in Burton upon Trent, England.

Before we start with the red cards, I would like to make the point that this is only about the decisions on the field. In case of doubt, we agree with the ref and stick to his decision. If an incident has occurred behind the referee’s back (something he hasn’t seen), the decision has been marked as not correct. The FA having taken action after the game is something we didn’t take account of in our numbers. We only judged the ref and his decisions on the field.

The league average on red cards was 21.43% of correct decisions. A ridiculously low number.

RED CARDS

The first thing we notice is that in the games we reviewed, only against Aston Villa did the refs get it spot on when a red card had to be given. This shows that it can be done. But  Villa is the only team to even come close to a perfect score in these types of decisions.

12 teams have a higher score than the league average. So this means 8 teams have a lower score.  And 4 of those teams have a score of 0 (zero). This means that the refs didn’t make any correct decisions on red cards! Be it nott sending someone off who should have been sent off, or sending someone off who shouldn’t have been sent off… nothing was correct.

Do you have any other word apart from ‘disastrous’ for such a score?

As this is an Arsenal blog I would like to point at the fact that Arsenal had a score higher than the league average. In fact the score from Arsenal came closest to the league average.  So if you think 1 correct decision in 5 decisions is alright, then the refs did all right in Arsenal games. Needless to say, I totally disagree with this and that I think that the score should be around that of Aston Villa. For all teams, in fact.

This type of decision leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Obviously, referees are not that interested in keeping the game clean. I have seen players slapping their opponents on the head without being sent off. I have seen players kicking each other when the ball was out of play or on the other side of the pitch. I have seen two footed tackles with studs showing over the ball. I have seen studs planted on knees that could have easily cost a player his career. I have seen nasty and disgusting things that don’t belong on a football field. Things that belong in cage fighting, but not in football.

BURNLEY, UNITED KINGDOM – APRIL 03: Referee Alan Wiley looks on during the Barclays Premier League match between Burnley and Manchester City at Turf Moor on April 3, 2010 in Burnley, England.

And far too many of those things went unpunished by the refs. Sometimes even without calling a foul. At times it looked like the refs were afraid to show the needed red cards. I think this is cowardly behaviour from the refs. Maybe inspired by the fact that the media are too quick to say: the ref ruined the game by handing out that red card. This is bollocks! It is the player who commits the assault or who punches another player that is guilty of ruining the game! I repeat: IT IS THE PLAYER WHO DOES THIS WHO IS RUINING THE GAME. NOT THE REF.

The ref is only ruining his game and that of the team who wants to play football when he doesn’t give a red card when it should be so.

After making myself clear on this we move on to the penalty decisions. Again I would like to point at the fact that in case of doubt we give the referee the benefit of the doubt.  The overall league average of correct penalty decisions was 62,24%.

PENALTY DECISIONS

In the penalty decisions we see that again Aston Villa have once again most decisions in favour of them. With a score of 83.33% they have a score above the 80% mark and this means that the refs have done more than 21% better than the league average.

In this table we have 3 teams with a score above the 80% mark in fact. Wigan and Swansea also join Aston Villa.

If we look at the 70% mark (the minimum score that is acceptable) we see that only 8 teams have a higher score. So 12 teams have to live with the fact that the refs couldn’t produce the strict minimum that should be reached.

At the bottom of this table, we find Blackburn. With a score of just 30% of the penalty decisions in their games as correct. Decisions in Fulham games were just slightly better with 33.33%.

Mike Riley, do you think this is serious? Do you think this is acceptable? This is awful refereeing. There are not enough words to describe my disappointment about those numbers.

I know lots have been said about Arsenal and penalties in the past season. And yes Arsenal has been treated badly with a score of 56.06% correct penalty decisions. But we weren’t the only victims. Not that this is a big consolation of course.

Teams don’t deserve this, no matter which team is on the field. Each teams deserves good and fair referees who are capable of scoring at least 70% on this type of decisions and for penalties the bar should be raised to at least 80% if not more.

MANCHESTER, ENGLAND – APRIL 30: Referee Andre Marriner books Nigel De Jong of Manchester City after a foul on Danny Welbeck during the Barclays Premier League match between Manchester City and Manchester United at Etihad Stadium on April 30, 2012 in Manchester, England.

Leaving this behind us we move on to the most important type of decisions: the goal decisions.

These decisions are what win games and what win titles or lose titles. This is what should be the most correct of them all. And to start with, there is some good news: this is the decision that the refs got the highest score in. The overall league average was 91.75% correct decisions.

So this is good, one could say. But I’m not that easy satisfied. This type of decision decides who takes the points home and should therefore have a score of 99%. I could have said I want a score of 100%. But even I will admit that 100% perfection rarely exists. So I could take the 1 mistake in 100 goals.

But what I cannot expect is the fact that the number we have found means that almost 1 goal in 10 is wrong! That is an average of almost 3 wrong goals each matchday.  That is awful.

Let us move on to the table.

GOAL

The team that came closest to the score that I would like to see was Newcastle. The refs, therefore, in the games featuring Newcastle, have done a good job, showing it can in fact be done. The final score of 97.86% is decent and is more than 6% above the league average. And as they like to be good neighbours, the score from Sunderland comes close to the Newcastle score.

In fact we have 12 teams that have a higher score than the league average. But this also means that we had 8 teams that didn’t manage to get the average score.

Arsenal are leading the pack of the teams that didn’t got the league average score in 13th place.

To be fair, 19 teams are rather close to the league average if you want to look at it in a nice way. But there is one team that has seen the most biased referees of them all. Stoke are that team and in their games, the refs came up with a score of 66.67% correct goal decisions.

This means that of every 10 goals that were scored in games that had Stoke on the field at least 3 were not correct! This is a disgrace. Teams don’t deserve such crap decisions! No team does!

SOLNA, SWEDEN – JUNE 06: Referee Mike Riley of England during the FIFA2010 World Cup Qualifying Group 1 match between Sweden and Denmark at the Rasunda Stadium on June 6, 2009 in Solna, Sweden. 

FINAL TABLE AND CONCLUSIONS

If we put all the tables together and calculate the average we end up with an order that we will show you below.

The higher the place in this league table, the better the decisions have been in total for the games with the teams involved. Of course there are individual cases in some games where things will have been the reverse of what the situation really was. But this is an average referee league table based on 155 games.

This is not saying that the teams on the top got the decisions their way. Or the one at the bottom got the decisions against them. No, this is the score of how the different referees did when the teams were on the field.  This is a league table based on the percentage of correct decisions in total from the refs. This is completely different from what we will show you in the next article when we look at the bias.

But the next table  shows which supporters have been blessed with good refereeing in general and which teams have been pestered with bad refereeing. This is based on all the different types of decisions we have given you so far.

MANCHESTER, ENGLAND – APRIL 08: Nedum Onuoha of Queens Park Rangers protests to Referee Lee Mason after he awarded a penalty to Manchester United during the Barclays Premier League match between Manchester United and Queens Park Rangers at Old Trafford on April 8, 2012 in Manchester, England.

THE FINAL REFEREE LEAGUE TABLE

So Swansea have seen the best refereeing in the whole league last season. closely followed by Aston Villa and West Bromwich Albion.

The 3 teams that have seen the worst referees this season are QPR, Fulham and Stoke.

Check out your own favourite team in this table and try to remember whether what you’ve seen was good or bad from the referees in general. Don’t think of it as a scenario wherein your team was either awarded or denied an advantage. That isn’t the point of this table. The only thing that matters is  whether the refs were correct in their decisions for both teams.

I will pick my own team of course. It is in 14th place, on the side of the league table where we have seen poor refereeing.

]]> http://www.sportskeeda.com/2012/08/08/only-1-in-5-red-cards-was-right-last-year-ref-league-tables-the-important-decisions/feed/ 1 154964 http://www.sportskeeda.com/2012/08/08/epl-ref-review-tables-2012-evaluating-the-decision-making-competence-part-2/ http://www.sportskeeda.com/2012/08/08/epl-ref-review-tables-2012-evaluating-the-decision-making-competence-part-2/#comments Wed, 08 Aug 2012 07:20:51 +0000 UntoldArsenal http://blog.emiratesstadium.info/?p=23658

LONDON, ENGLAND – APRIL 08: Referee Martin Atkinson in action during the Barclays Premier League match between Arsenal and Manchester City at Emirates Stadium on April 8, 2012 in London, England. (Photo by Michael Regan/Getty Images)

Untold Arsenal has a team of qualified referees who have reviewed more than 40% of the EPL games from last season. The reviews themselves were based on full match video footage with the advantage of video technology features such as slow motion and pause.

By reviewing those 155 games we have made a database of more than 7000 decisions that have been judged by our panel of dedicated and qualified referees.

The numbers you will see are based on those decisions and those reviewed games.

In this summary of all the team reviews we will take a look at some of  the different decisions.

I would like to stress that the numbers we show in this article are just based on the decisions from the refs. This is not about which teams got the decisions. The numbers are based on the decisions from the refs in the games of said teams.

Of course for any team it is better to end up with a high score of correct decisions. After all name me one football supporter who wants to see referees making mistakes and screwing up games?

So in a way it is of course good to have a high % score of correct decisions.

In this article we will focus on the “other” decisions, the offside decisions and the yellow card decisions. The other decisions and offside decisions are weighted with 1 point in our reviews. The yellow cards were weighted with 2 points.

“OTHER” DECISIONS

The “other decisions” are the decisions that are being made “in the middle of the field”. It is all little fouls, pushes, trips, shoves, handballs, dangerous play, …. in short all the fouls that happen somewhere on the field outside the penalty area.

To clarify a few things first about this type of decisions. When we could not judge the decision because of lack of images or replays we gave the decision to the ref as a correct one.  Because we always did it like that in case of doubt: we gave the decision to the ref.

So we see that Swansea is the team where the refs made the most correct decisions about fouls in the middle of the field. This is fouls for and against both teams on the field when Swansea was one of the teams playing.  So Swansea fans have not only been blessed with some excellent football the way it is played by the best players, with the ball on the ground and with a fluent passing game. They also have been blessed with referees who have done their best to do their games as good as possible.

Swansea is the ONLY TEAM in the league that has seen a correct decision % of more than 80%. I think this is the standard that should be the minimum for the referees in the PL. Our numbers show it can be done. So why don’t they keep that level of performance for other teams?

In total 12 teams have had the honour of having a correct decisions percentage of more than 70%. On paper that is enough in most countries. But that means that 8 teams didn’t get that score in their games! How can you say that the referees in the PL are good enough when 40% of the teams do net receive the strict minimum that is required?

All 20 teams should have a correct decisions % above 70%. And as long as this is not happening the PGMOL and the referees are not good enough. There is no other way but to put it that way.

As this is an Arsenal blog I point at the fact that Arsenal is in 18th place in this table. So very low near the bottom of the table. Bottom of the table is Stoke City.  They have seen the most awful refereeing in the league.  And that is without even thinking about their style of football.

OFFSIDE DECISIONS

The next table we will show is the offside decisions. To clarify a few things first about this type of decisions. When we could not judge the decision because of lack of images or replays we gave the decision to the ref as a correct one.  Because we always did it like that in case of doubt: we gave the decision to the ref.

This season the head of the PGMOL came out with some numbers, telling us that 99% of the offside decisions were correct. Just take a look at this league table then. Our average was just over 90% and as been said we gave the benefit of the doubt to the ref very easy.

Not one team came close to the claimed 99% score from Mike Riley. The closest was Tottenham Hotspur with 95% and Newcastle also got above the 95% mark. 9 teams got a score above our league average score. And 10 teams got a score of over 90% in total. The other 10 teams are below the 90% mark. With even Wigan only getting a score of 78%.

How on earth can we take Mike 99% Riley seriously after this?  If he wouldn’t have claimed that 99% we could say about the offside decisions: oh, well this will be the highest possible score that can be made on this. But after Mike 99 raising the bar and expectations to this height he is the one to blame for our disappointment about this score.

As this is an Arsenal blog I gladly point at the fact that Arsenal is in 8th place in this league table. And Arsenal is one of the “lucky” teams that has a score that is higher than the league average.

Yellow Card decisions

The next type of decisions is the first that has a weight on it: the yellow card decisions league table. We came up with a league average of 62,24% correct decisions on yellow cards. An already devastating low number. Let us see how the different teams fared.

The team with the best score is Aston Villa. But even in their games the 70% score was not reached. So all in all this really is a disappointing result. But in all this worse decisions making Aston Villa had the privilege of seeing the best of the worst one could say.

11 teams got a score above the league average. Meaning we also got 9 teams with a lower score than the league average. And in the games when Wolverhampton was around it was just terrible. This must be the most miserable number of them all. More than 17% below the already unacceptable league average.

I don’t know how to describe this. This is so disappointing.

And if I can shine a little light in this total darkness and as this is an Arsenal blog I like to point at the score of the games in which Arsenal played a part.  Arsenal finished in 5th place in this league table. So in the Arsenal games we can say that only 4 decisions in 10 were wrong when yellow cards had to be given or not of course.

In the next article we will move on to the most important decisions: red cards, penalties and goals.

For the first part of this article click here.

When I think about Arsenal and our successes and the exciting teams I’ve been privileged to watch at Highbury and the Emirates, I always start at 1996. The beginning of the Wenger era.

It’s for me a natural association. Arsène’s the current manager. The squad is entirely his and any recent success has been down his coaching staff and to his Arsenal team.

I still remember the George Graham teams. One nil to the Arsenal an all that. More recently, I watched the CL final where Chelsea ground out a result. Has there ever been a worse advert for EPL football? I’m sure every single Chelsea fan out there would disagree because they won, but I know what I’d rather watch. Free flowing attacking football.

In the EPL alone, it’s twenty teams competing for only four trophies. Not a lot to go around really when you think about it.  And considering only four teams can compete in the CL that only leaves three trophies which are realistically open to all others.

If you add in to the lower leagues playing in the two cup competitions, then there really isn’t that much to go around. Yet we’re “supposed” to win something every year. Because we’re The Arsenal?

I know it’s been seven years now since we won a trophy. I know it hurts but who else has won the silverware?

Since 1996:

In the last sixteen years, the league has only been won by four different teams:

• Man. U.        9 times. 
• Arsenal.       3 times. 
• Chelsea.       3 times. 
• Man. City.    Once.

So out of twenty teams, all competing for the Holy Grail, in reality, there are only a handful of teams who realistically are in with a real chance of regularly winning the league. I know any team can win it but I’m talking about winning on a regular basis.

Last season, City won it on goal difference with the last kick of the ball, deep into overtime. It was that close. Money well spent? I’d disagree. If I’d spent close to a $1 billion on my team. I’d like a guarantee that we’d win everything. As we know, there are no certainties in football.

(It is also interesting that in the French League, Paris St Germain, who are in fact the richest club in the world now – even richer than Man C potentially, failed to win the French league last year – although everyone expects them to get it right this year, next year and forever).

In the CL, having to finish top four to even be allowed to be in the competition makes it even more difficult for a team normally in the bottom half of the league even to think about competing in it. Not to say that couldn’t happen but realistically, the chances of say Swansea finishing top four then going on to win the CL would be nothing short of a miracle. The most they can hope for is the same as Liverpool at the moment – a good year and a place in the Europa.

Champions league winners

•  Man. U.     2.
• Chelsea.    1.
• Liverpool   1.

That’s it over the period. And  in the FA Cup, it’s basically the same story. Mainly won by one of the top six, although obviously in a cup competition all the other teams have a fair chance of an upset and progressing further. Winning the final none the less normally goes with form.

FA Cup:                         

• Chelsea         6              
• Arsenal         4
• Man. U.         2
• Liverpool      2
• Man. City       1
• Portsmouth   1

The best chance for a team outside the top six is definitely the League Cup. Over the last sixteen years it has been won by nine different teams with only a couple of teams winning it more than once.

So where’s Arsenal in terms of still pushing hard for a share of the honours?

We’ve won the league three times and finished in the top four every single year since Arsène joined us – an experience only equaled by Real Madrid and Man United. Forget Barcelona, Milan, Inter – the consistency of the Champions League is down to three teams.

We’ve been in the FA Cup final five times and won it four times. We’ve been in the CL final once and the league Cup final twice.

If you look at how that compares to the other nineteen teams that we compete against in the league, I think we’re very consistent. We are without a doubt, a top four team. At the start of every season we have as good a chance as the other teams that have won the league recently, and every year we have a reasonable run in the CL and have as good a chance as any of the top four of going all the way in all of the cup competitions.

And yet I read a comment recently that said “we’re on the decline”.  Not compared with the years before Arsène we are not…

• 1996 – 5th (Rioch)
• 1995 – 12th (Graham – who was sacked but we were not much better off when he left)*
• 1994 – 4th
• 1993 – 10th*
• 1992 – 4th
• 1991 – 1st
• 1990 – 4th*

(As a side in the * years, Tottenham finished ahead of us, just to rub the salt in).

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. I’m sure there are tons of fans who are only interested in us winning trophies. They are important after all. Isn’t that why we all support Arsenal? To see them beat everybody and win all the trophies?

Maybe I’m just plain old fashioned, or maybe I’m just old, but I still just enjoy watching Arsenal playing good attacking football. Football with flair. I love the games and both from watching the games and looking at the history, I can’t see how we are in decline.

In fact I actually believe we’re on the up. The new signings this summer, I think, will add strength and depth to the squad. If RVP goes, then so be it. Someone else will have to step up and take his place. Just like every other time, one of our best players leave or retires.

The new season is almost up on us, and like every other one I’ve experienced in the last twenty two years. I start it with the same optimism as always.

On the first day of the season, we all start at zero.

With a 3rd new player now added to our first team squad it is time yet again to update the list of players that we will have this season.  The list known as the 25.

BOLTON, ENGLAND – FEBRUARY 01: Thomas Vermaelen and Per Mertesacker (R) of Arsenal challenge Mark Davies of Bolton Wanderers during the Barclays Premier League match between Bolton Wanderers and Arsenal at the Reebok Stadium on February 1, 2012 in Bolton, England.

Part 1.1, 13 overseas players aged over 21

1. Fabianski
2. Sagna
3. Mertesacker
4. Vermaelen
5. Koscielny
6. Santos
7. Diaby
8. Rosicky
9. Arteta
10. Gervinho
11. Podolski
12. Giroud
13. Cazorla

Part 1.2   Possible newcomers: Sahin

Part 1.3  Possible existing players who stay despite being tipped for transfer

1. Arshavin
2. Van Persie
3. Chamakh
4. Park
5. Squillaci
6. Bendtner

LONDON, ENGLAND – JULY 14: Marouane Chamakh of Arsenal during the Markus Liebherr Memorial Cup match between Arsenal and Anderlecht at St Mary’s Stadium, Southampton, England.

Part 2.  Home-grown players

1. Szczesny
2. Djourou
3. Gibbs
4. Ramsey
5. Song
6. Walcott
7. Mannone
8. Lansbury
9. Eastmond

Adding together parts 1.1 and 2, (as these are the players who seem fairly likely to be with Arsenal this season) we have 22 players which means three of the six in part 1.2 could stay, if there are no more transfers.  (Players can of course stay, but simply not be listed in the 25, but obviously this is the least ideal situation).

Part 3 the Under 21s who don’t count towards the 25.

1. Bartley
2. Coquelin
3. Jenkinson
4. Wilshere
5. Miquel
6. Frimpong
7. Miyaichi
8. Oxlade-Chamberlain
9. Martinez
10. Yennaris
11. Aneke
12. Eisfeld

LONDON, ENGLAND – JULY 14: Kyle Bartley of Arsenal during the Markus Liebherr Memorial Cup match between Southampton and Arsenal at St Mary’s Stadium, Southampton.

Assuming we do indeed fill up the 25 from parts 1 and 2, and assuming for the moment that none of the youngsters in part 3 go on loan we will have a 37 man squad.  However there is already talk of Ryo Miyaichi going on loan.

So, three places spare in the 25, and they could go to men of any nationality.  Below is the current list of players who might fill those gaps (although of course there is no need to have the gaps filled – we don’t have to nominate 25).  The only other signing on the horizon is Sahin so he is included, but of course there could be any of the multitude of players mentioned in connection with Arsenal each day in the press.

Putting the list in order of the likelihood of any player joining the list to make up the 25 is a mugs game, but since being a mug is what writing a blog is all about, here we go…   The players most likely to join the list above to make up the 25 in order of likelihood

1. Sahin
2. A N Other
3. Van Persie
4. Bendtner
5. Chamakh
6. Arshavin
7. Squillaci
8. Park

The only reason for Sahin not coming to Arsenal is because another club offers him what he perceives to be a better loan spell. The chance of A N Other arriving is, well, a guess. No one is (as I write) clearly approaching the signing stage.  As for Van Persie, until he signs elsewhere he is with us. Doing a u-turn is not unknown. Remember Rooney?

Those three would fill the remaining spaces.  After that it is anyone’s guess and I guess those remaining players will only be with us if they can’t find new clubs.  If they are still on our books and there’s a space in the 25, I guess they get registered, although whether they will ever get a game is hard to see.

Looking at the bottom I can’t see Park having a future since he looked so out of touch when he did play last season.  Squillaci had injuries and was always a stop-gap – and now we have a good range of central defenders.  Arshavin seems to have no problems in picking up offers, so I am sure he will leave.  Bendtner might just stay if no one can meet his terms, but it seems unlikely.  Chamakh might just stay if no one is buying – but again it seems unlikely.  He did start off well but something went wrong.  It happens.

LONDON, ENGLAND – OCTOBER 25: Park Chu-Young of Arsenal is congratulated by team mates after scoring his teams second goal of the game during the Carling Cup Fourth Round match between Arsenal and Bolton Wanderers at Emirates Stadium on October 25, 2011 in London, England.

So to bring our 25 together, at present I am going for

1. Fabianski
2. Sagna
3. Mertesacker
4. Vermaelen
5. Koscielny
6. Santos
7. Diaby
8. Rosicky
9. Arteta
10. Gervinho
11. Podolski
12. Giroud
13. Cazorla
14. Szczesny
15. Djourou
16. Gibbs
17. Ramsey
18. Song
19. Walcott
20. Mannone
21. Lansbury
22. Eastmond
23. Sahin
24. Van Persie
25. A N Other

And from the under 21s…

1. Bartley
2. Coquelin
3. Jenkinson
4. Wilshere
5. Miquel
6. Frimpong
7. Miyaichi
8. Oxlade-Chamberlain
9. Martinez
10. Yennaris
11. Aneke
12. Eisfeld

Not a bad squad eh?

So, the early line up is…..

Schchaksczzzhy
Coquelin,  Vermaelen,  Koscielny,  Gibbs
Cazorla, Song, Arteta
Oxlade-Chamberlain, Podolski, Giroud,

Sorry I put Fabianski in goal when I first published this, meant to put the other fella whose name I can’t spell.  My cut and paste went wrong.  Anyway, And then just think of the bench.

Actually I haven’t got a clue how the forward line will fit together, nor what will happen if by a strange chance RVP actually stays.  I am sure you know better….

SO KON PO, HONG KONG – JULY 29: Arsenal FC manager Arsene Wenger looks on during the pre-season Asian Tour friendly match between Kitchee FC and Arsenal at Hong Kong Stadium on July 29, 2012 in Hong Kong. (Photo by Victor Fraile/Getty Images)

We were speaking yesterday  about changes in management at the clubs, and what would happen after Arsene Wenger leaves.

If I were the chairman of a football club, or maybe the man charged with making the club run smoothly for the chairman, one thing I would do would slap a no-comment clause in the contract with any manager I took on.  No matter if he was sacked, if he retired, or resigned – no comment for at least 18 months.

Obviously if it were Mr Wenger I wouldn’t imagine too much of a problem – he’s generally very discrete, but supposing I’d ended up as adviser to the chairman of Tottenham and for some reason had Harry Redknapp as the team manager.  I’d have thought several things upon his appointment:

a) Every club he has been involved with has then gone into administration or liquidation at some time after his tenure.  That may be coincidence, but I’d better keep an eye on things, just in case.

b) He is by his own admission dyscalculic – which is frightening for a man who is central to the buying and selling of players.  His vision of who is a good player or might not be as focused as that of a man who does understand figures.

c) Although profoundly dyslexic also by his own admission he “writes” columns in newspapers.   That is perhaps my biggest worry of all, because if he says something once I have sacked him (as inevitably I would) he is going to put the boot in.

That is what I would think, and that is what I would want to avoid.  But it seems Tottenham couldn’t or didn’t bother to get a gagging order – or maybe such things are not practical these days.  So now we read that Mr Redknapp “has warned Spurs fans to brace themselves for the departure of Luka Modric.”  (Oh don’t you just love that quaint old-fashioned journo language.  Brace yourselves.   Hold on to the railings – a semi-skimmed journalist coming through.)

Mr Redknapp of course didn’t write that – at best he said it.  But I suspect it is not exactly what anyone who supports Tottenham actually wants to hear.  I remember when I heard that Robin VP was saying he was off.  Not my favourite memory.  I’ve got used to it now, and have actually started to see it as yet another episode in the Flamini Fallacy, but still, at the time I was, as they say, gutted (probably because I wasn’t properly braced).

Anyway, Modric is Croatian (lovely country), plays in midfield and has been one of the players the media have been keen on moving around for a couple of years.  Real Madrid apparently want him.  Chelsea want him.  But Mr Redknapp said that his boss Mr Levy promised to allow Modders to leave this year.

Mr Redknapp is reported as saying, by the Sun (so it must be true): “I would not be sure Luka would start the season at Tottenham. The club would be happy to sell if they get the right money. The chairman [Daniel Levy] said to him last year ‘Give us one more season and if Real come in, I won’t stand in your way’.”

Now I might be wrong, but wasn’t there someone else who was told by Tottenham they could go if an offer came in, and then the member of the board said no this is not true.  Or did I just invent that.  (Sorry, the old memory is not what it was.  Probably never was).

So disruption during the preseason is not the prerogative of Arsenal.  But like Arsenal with RVP, Tottenham can think, maybe we can get some dosh and spend it on…

Well who?  For Arsenal I am not sure who we would want.  Saying “another full back” is not an answer, because you have to name a full back who is better than we have and who is available and who will drop  the low taxes of foreign parts for the higher taxes of England.  Tottenham however are looking elsewhere: for example at a goalkeeper.

But if Modric goes it will be interesting if the media then do what they do to Arsenal and start saying that players like Bale are questioning the aspirations of the club, and are unsettled, and want to go.  (Actually they have already said that).

We know all about that of course, and although an Arsenal fan born and bred in Tottenham doesn’t have sympathy for the neighbours, any more than vice versa, I think both sides can recognise this player poaching is getting crazy.  The only way round it, as Arsenal show this summer, is to buy big before the other guy goes.  But Tottenham have a problem in that they have yet to build their stadium, and while doing that they will have to borrow money, and that will, as with the Arsenal stadium project, reduce their borrowing power.  Unless their billionaire owner steps in and funds the work himself – in the style that Mr Usmanov wants.   Now that would be an interesting development.

However for a moment, Tottenham and Arsenal are strangely united in being victims of the press speculation about ambition, players moving on, and all that tosh.

But here’s a word for Tottenham fans (not that they need me to saying anything).  Build a great youth system, and it can save you a few shillings a year.  Unless your best youth player for several years gets injured. That’s a bit of a bugger too.  The Tottenham return to the reserve league after the years out of it caused by Mr Redknapp’s dislike of reserves, can only help them.  It will take a few years to recover from the mess that Mr Redknapp caused by dismembering the reserves, but it is vital.  Without it, in my humble opinion, progress is much harder.

One interesting aspect of this Robin van Persie “transfer saga” is that it has made clear to me, as never before, the specific agenda of these “transfer saga” media campaigns where Arsenal fans are concerned.

Specifically, this is the attitude that they want Arsenal fans to take (which has never been stated so openly in any other “transfer saga”):

“The bloke can score goals. Apart from that, he is no different from the man who delivers your or my pizza. It’s only about money, nothing else…and Arsenal will only keep their top players when they are able to pay what Man City can. Until then, get used to seeing the annual exodus.”

So, that’s what they want from us. To get used to the “annual exodus,” and not let any of it bother us. Specifically, where fans are concerned, it would appear that the agenda of the “transfer saga” (i.e. what they want us to do) can be summed up in some manner similar to the following:

1) Don’t look closer than what’s reported in the media

2) Don’t respond emotionally to player exits

and

3) Once a player announces his “desire to leave,” take no proactive action to affect the outcome. Just accept that he’s gone.

Up until now, I’ve been responding to “transfer saga” campaigns with the implicit assumption that the campaign was intended to cause me to take some kind of action; for example, to turn against the Club, or to actively reject a certain player and force an exit. However, looking more closely, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Rather, it appears to me that these “transfer sagas” that we see in the media are actually intended to keep Arsenal fans satisfied with superficial information, and un-involved in whatever else might be going on behind the scenes.

Or in other words, they’re telling us: “Look away, move along, nothing to see here.”  And unfortunately, I think this aspect of the campaign has been quite successful where Arsenal fans are concerned. Specifically, I think that Arsenal fans are (or have been until now) allowing the media to control our perceptions about these “transfer sagas,” when we should be looking more closely and asking questions.

Which isn’t good. Because if they want us to look away, then it’s in Arsenal’s best interests for us to look more closely. And if they want us to accept our players leaving with resignation, then Arsenal needs us to care, and to take an active interest in keeping our players. And more particularly, we need to look more closely at exactly why it is that these players are deciding to leave Arsenal in the first place.

Because I’m not going to lie. The following “news reports” from this RVP “transfer saga” have left me completely unnerved:

——————-

“Arsenal have six weeks to sell RVP and bed in a replacement before the season starts. Much better than last year, when we lost Nasri and Fabregas after the season had started.

Well done, Arsène and Ivan. And well done for running the club as it needs to be, and not as one prima donna wants it to be.

But honestly, we have no idea of what goes on behind closed doors. Let’s hold on to the abuse for the moment. Let’s hear both sides of the story. And if Van Persie is being a mercenary like Nasri, he isn’t worth our abuse anyway.

Loyalty is dead.”

——————

*That last part is the photo caption, and appears underneath a photo of Arsène and Robin together.

Example 2:

————-

“As with the thunk-thunk-thunk of your childhood pets dropping dead in succession, you’d think you’d have become used to it by now.

“It happens almost every summer these days that Arsenal lose a star player. Patrick Vieira, Thierry Henry, Emmanuel Adebayor, Cesc Fàbregas, Gaël Clichy and Samir Nasri have all left since 2005… This year, it’s Robin van Persie’s turn to ride off into the sunset.”

————

Example. 3:

“We here at Pies are… intrigued by [Robin’s] new grey locks. Maybe the stress of leaving Arsenal has prematurely aged the (now) silver fox-in-the-box?”

———–

Example. 4:

“The problem is that Arsenal have previous. United and, particularly, City will know all about the Fabregas and Nasri sales. They will be happy to wait. Arsenal cannot afford to.”

I really don’t know what to say in response to the above “news reports” other than “what the hell?” However, I do think that these reports certainly have some extremely nasty connotations, which indicate to me that it’s time for Arsenal fans to be taking a closer look at what’s really going on behind the scenes of these “transfer sagas.”

So, let’s begin doing that by taking a closer look at the Cesc and Nasri “transfer sagas” from last summer. Recall that the version of events that fans have received from the media is that both Cesc and Samir ultimately “forced” these transfers on Arsenal; Cesc with his “desire to return to his boyhood club,” and Samir with his “desire to earn more money.”

The following are some of the news reports from the RVP “transfer saga,” and how they have referred to the previous departures of Cesc and Nasri:

“The loss of Van Persie carries the same desperate implications that came with the departures of Fabregas and Nasri. Wenger swore that he could keep the players he saw as the future of the club, then found himself scrambling desperately to fill some of the empty spaces in the last days of the transfer window.”

“The manager’s plans were thrown into chaos last summer when he attempted to keep Samir Nasri and Cesc Fabregas but saw both leave.”

Let’s think about this. Arsène Wenger “swore that he could keep” Cesc and Nasri, but failed. And he “attempted to keep” Cesc and Nasri, but they left anyway. Theoretically, Arsène Wenger has the power to decide which players he keeps and which ones he doesn’t. So, how could Cesc and Nasri leave against his wishes, thus throwing his plans for the season “into chaos?”

Specifically, if Arsène wanted to transfer Cesc or Nasri, or knew that he was going to have to transfer Cesc or Nasri because the player was “unsettled,” couldn’t he have planned for it in an orderly way?

First, let’s consider the question of whether Arsène really was planning to keep these players and had his plans disrupted, or whether he was planning to transfer them all along.

Cesc was transferred on 15 August, after the first match of the season (Newcastle) had already been played. Cesc hadn’t played at all in the pre-season and didn’t play against Newcastle, because Arsène Wenger said that he had “injury” concerns. In the media at the time, the fact that Cesc wasn’t playing was portrayed as related to the “transfer saga” because Cesc was too “unsettled” to play (or something like that).

At the time Cesc was transferred, there were only 15 days left in the transfer window. And it seems that, if Arsène Wenger had been planning to transfer Cesc, or wanting to transfer Cesc, he would have done it before then. If Arsène had kept Cesc into the season, it appears that he was intending to keep him throughout the season. And if Cesc was so unhappy and “unsettled” that Arsène couldn’t play him in the pre-season, it seems that he would have transferred him during the Summer. Also, Arsène had not bought a replacement for Cesc.

Considering all of the above,  it seems to me that Arsène, going into the season, was confident that Cesc was both willing to and emotionally capable of playing for Arsenal, and was planning to keep him. So, I believe that these circumstances are consistent with the idea that Arsène “attempted to keep” Cesc, and then somehow “failed” to do so 15 days before the close of the transfer window.

But on the other hand…. How does that make any sense?

The following is what we know about the circumstances of the transfer (and it’s not a lot):

“Reports of the deal surfaced at halftime of the first leg of Barcelona’s Spanish Super Cup match against Real Madrid on Sunday, which ended 2-2.

“The club announced Fabregas’ departure just before 10pm last night – half-time of the Spanish Super Cup first leg between Barcelona and Real Madrid at the Bernabeu which finished 2-2 – with Fabregas already en route to Spain.”

“The Spanish champions later revealed, on their official website, that Fabregas will undergo a medical at Barcelona Hospital at 0700 BST on Monday, before undergoing a further test at Barcelona’s medical centre at 0930 BST.”

So, 15 days before the close of the transfer window, on a Sunday night when Barcelona had a match, Barcelona and Arsenal reached an “agreement in principle” for the transfer of Cesc Fabregas. Cesc was already in the air, and Barcelona announced that Cesc would be taken directly to the hospital the next morning. Cesc was presented as a Barcelona player the next day.

And the reason that this supposedly occurred was because Arsène Wenger suddenly realized that Cesc wanted to return to Barcelona, and that it would be wrong to keep him at Arsenal for the remainder of the season.

Right…..Personally, I’m having difficulty in understanding how Arsène Wenger would suddenly reach this conclusion in late August, at a time when transferring Fabregas was going to be damaging to Arsenal’s season, but not before.

Likewise, the version of the Nasri transfer that appears in the media narrative similarly defies all logical explanation:

“The France midfielder trained with Arsenal yesterday morning as they prepared for the second leg of their tie with Udinese, looking to defend a 1-0 advantage and secure another season of Champions League football.

But instead of travelling to Italy, Nasri made for Manchester for a medical.”

So, Samir Nasri was training with Arsenal in the morning, and was apparently a planned part of Arsenal’s team that was going to travel to Udinese. But then, a transfer was suddenly agreed, and Nasri was taken directly to the hospital in Manchester. The supposed reason for this was as follows:

“Nasri is a situation where the player didn’t want to extend his contract with the proposals he had somewhere else…What kind of commitment can you have when the player is not there long-term?”

I’m sorry, but this makes absolutely no sense. The morning before Arsenal travelled to Italy to face Udinese, Arsène Wenger suddenly realized that, since Samir had decided not to renew his contract at the close of next season, then there was no point in keeping him for the remainder of this season because he wasn’t “committed” to Arsenal? And Arsenal fans are supposed to believe this?

The following is the announcement that appeared on Arsenal’s official website regarding Nasri:

“Arsenal can confirm that they have agreed terms for Samir Nasri to move to Manchester City,” said a statement on the Arsenal club website. “The 24-year-old midfielder, who has spent three years with the Gunners, has been omitted from Arsenal’s squad which flies to Udinese this afternoon and instead will travel north for a medical.”

I chose to highlight the actual wording of Arsenal’s statement here because, contrary to the narrative reported in the media, Arsenal did not include the portion about Nasri training with the Arsenal squad that morning. Rather, Arsenal merely said that Samir had been “omitted from Arsenal’s squad which flies to Udinese this afternoon.” Which would appear to suggest that Nasri might actually have been elsewhere at the time that the agreement was announced. Just like Cesc was “already on a plane” to Barcelona, at the time when his transfer was announced.

But the question that hasn’t been answered here, regarding Cesc in particular, is where exactly was Cesc before the transfer was announced, if not at Arsenal? Where was Cesc before he boarded this plane to Barcelona? For example, at the conclusion of the Cesc “transfer saga,” Cesc supposedly made the following statement:

“I am sorry I couldn’t say anything for the last two and half months, Arsenal would not allow me to talk, I was disappointed and upset about that but it had to be like that. I still have, personally, a great relationship with them and I am disappointed to have maybe lost [the affection of] some of the fans. I am sorry I couldn’t say anything…”

So, why exactly couldn’t Cesc say anything for two and a half months? Because Arsenal refused to let him? That sounds shady to me. And there’s also the following:

“CESC FABREGAS is planning to release a recorded goodbye to Arsenal supporters as soon as his protracted move to Barcelona goes through….

Providing Arsenal sanction the deal, Fabregas will be on his way to the Nou Camp and People Sport understands he is considering recording a video farewell to Gunners fans in which he will thank them for their support.”

So, consistent with how the “transfer” actually unfolded in the end, it appears that this news report (from 31 July, 2011) was already aware that Cesc would be heading to Barcelona whenever the transfer agreement was announced. Or in other words, it was known in advance that Cesc wasn’t at Arsenal. But if Cesc wasn’t at Arsenal, then where was he?

And before anyone jumps on me for being a “conspiracy theorist,” I’ll go ahead and say that I know that the implications from the following news report are completely far-fetched. However, I do at least want to draw attention to the fact that the Mayor of Cesc’s hometown in Spain apparently claimed that Cesc had been kidnapped during his “transfer saga.” Unfortunately, I can’t find this statement in its original context, so I don’t know what it was really all about (for example, I don’t believe that the Mayor actually accused Arsenal of being the party who “kidnapped” Cesc, or whatever he might have said happened):

‘Cesc Fabregas is experiencing a kidnapping’

But anyway, taking all of the above into the account, I can’t think of any way to conclude this article, other than to ask:

What the hell is really going on in these “transfer sagas?” And even if Cesc wasn’t actually kidnapped, then where was he? And where is Robin now (can we see him, just to make sure he’s alright)?

And most importantly of all, I believe that we, as fans, should be keeping a closer eye on whatever might be going on behind the scenes in the Robin van Persie “transfer saga,” along with all other such “transfer sagas” that are presented to us in the future. Because whatever it is, I’m forced to the conclusion that Arsenal fans are most definitely not getting the real story.

Damien Duff (l) and Philippe Senderos of Fulham appeal to referee Phil Dowd as he awards a penalty for hand ball during the Barclays Premier League match between Everton and Fulham at Goodison Park

Untold Arsenal has a team of qualified referees who have reviewed more than 40% of the EPL games from last season. The reviews themselves were based on full match video footage with the advantage of video technology features such as slow motion and pause.

By reviewing those 155 games we have made a database of more than 7000 decisions that have been judged by our panel of dedicated and qualified referees.

The numbers you will see are based on those decisions and those reviewed games.

In the last weeks we have presented a report of each Premier League team and how the referees have treated them. We talked about the good decisions, and the wrong decisions and the bias we found in some team reports. But if you look at one report, you probably don’t have a clue how this relates to the rest of the league.

If you know your team was hit hard on the goal decisions it is a good thing (or bad thing) to know. But were the other teams hit harder by that type of decision or not? And to fill up this gap we will now present you a few different league tables.

If you see your team in position 1 it means that in their games the correct decisions on that type of call was high. In general this is a good thing of course. Because as football supporters, we want the refs to be correct.

Once again I would like to point that this is not a judgement on your favourite team in a way. It is a judgement of the refs and how they did in the games from your favorite team. If a team had lots of good decisions it still can be in a bad position when we look at the wrong calls. And also the other way round. A team that has a low score in correct decisions and thus having the refs making a mess of their games still could end up with a high bias in their favour when we look at those wrong decisions later on.

And in the next days, will also show the league table in which we show the position of the teams when it comes to bias. And when you look at those tables you will see if it evens out for your team, your rivals, your second team, a team you like, a team you hate… In one blink of an eye you will be able to find out. That will be articles to link to I think.

But now let us start with the first tables:

The correct decisions tables in which we show the competence of the refs in the games of the different teams.

The first column is giving the “league position” of each team. Then you have the name. Then you have the percentage of correct decisions and in this table it is the un-weighted decisions. In the next column you see the difference with the total league average we found. In the last column you see the number of games we reviewed of said teams.

And so you see that we had 11 teams in which the ref scored better than the league average, meaning they got more calls correct. 9 of them got a lower score from the refs. The league average on all decisions was 72.490% correct calls.

You can also see that the difference between Swansea who in their games had 9.24% more correct decisions than the league average and the number in Stoke games where the refs had 8.01% decisions less correct than the league average. This means that there has been a difference of some 17% in correct calls in games from Swansea compared to games with Stoke in it. This is absolutely shocking!

And as the PL always portrays itself as the best league in the world, I think the referees in that league should also be the best in the world. So the 70% correct decisions is simply not good enough for the best league in the world. I think the line should be drawn around the 80% mark in general.

With Arsenal at position 16, there are teams who had worse refs in their games.

And now we will do the same with the weighted decisions.

And this will be no longer a surprise to see Swansea on top of the correct decisions table. The refs scored more than 10,28% better than the overall league average. And to see Stoke at the bottom will also be no real surprise. The refs scored 9.69% worse in their games.  That is a difference of almost 20% between the first and the last team in this table!

The league average was 71,350% correct decisions.

Again I point at the fact that Arsenal also finished 16 in this table. And I just link that position goes some way to show that we sure didn’t “create” these numbers just to show how hard Arsenal has been done by the refs. If we would have judged the refs differently from the other teams we would have finished in the last position in these two tables.

No, some teams had much worse refs in their games than Arsenal.

If you take a look at those two tables you can also have a bit of an indication on how refs are when it comes to making important decisions. Not against or in favour of one team but it gives maybe an indication on how cautious refs are for some teams.

And again I stress that this is not yet saying: the refs got it for this team. No, it is just to see if refs make a difference when working with some teams.

And a team that goes up in the league table when you compare the unweighted decisions with the weighted, is Manchester United. In the first table they are in position 11 and are the team with the smallest positive outcome on correct decisions. But if you put weight on it, they rise to 8th position. This just shows that refs were more cautious in the more important decisions in games from Manchester United. The same goes for Newcastle. They go from 13th place to 9th place.

Liverpool is a team that has the opposite image. They go from 8th position to 12th in this table.

In the next article we will show the league tables with the ‘not so important’ decisions. We will show the league table of other decisions (fouls in the middle of the field), the offside decisions and the yellow card decisions.

Those are the decisions that have been weighted with 1 and 2 points in our weighted tables. In the article after that we will show the important decisions, the 3 pointers one could say like goals, penalties and red cards.

And then we will show which team had the biggest positive bias swing and who the biggest negative bias swing. All this in one blink of a eye.

Untold Arsenal will leave no stone unturned to show you how the state of referees was in the PL last season. And it sure doesn’t look great.

]]> http://www.sportskeeda.com/2012/08/07/epl-ref-review-tables-2012-evaluating-the-decision-making-competence/feed/ 0 043938 http://www.sportskeeda.com/2012/08/07/one-managerial-change-a-month-for-the-last-16-years-and-arsene-wenger-is-still-there/ http://www.sportskeeda.com/2012/08/07/one-managerial-change-a-month-for-the-last-16-years-and-arsene-wenger-is-still-there/#comments Mon, 06 Aug 2012 19:04:24 +0000 UntoldArsenal http://blog.emiratesstadium.info/?p=23926

We all know that Arsenal’s manager has been around for a long while – just as Sir Alex.  But what about the other managers?

Arsène Wenger joined the club back in October of 1996. He brought with him new ideas of how the game should be played but more importantly he revolutionised the training and scouting systems. Largely copied now by every other club.

He is without a doubt our most successful Manager.  (See The Managers’ Index for a complete comparative guide to all the managers Arsenal has ever had). Yet every other week when things aren’t going according to plan. Certain sections of the supporters call for him to go. So I wondered from when Arsène took charge, how many Managers has he seen come and go at other clubs in the top league?

From October 1996 not taking into consideration caretakers (there’s been 46 of them) the total number of managers who have come and gone in the Premier League is one hundred and sixty five (165).

I know it’s something that you don’t think about. In reality it works out to basically just under one a manager change month for the last sixteen years.

Now I could show you a table with all the clubs and managers who have come and go but I thought I’d just list a few of the interesting ones.

Firstly there are exceptions to the big turnover.

Stoke - Only one manager all the time they’ve been in the EPL. Obviously has a very good relationship with the owner. Although he was sacked by him then reinstated at a later date.

Man Utd - They’ve only had one since the EPL started and yes he’s been very successful.

Chelsea - They’ve had ten. Some good some not so. I can’t personally stand Jose but he was their best manager by far.

With Chelsea when egos collide I think we all know who’ll win: The Boss. They’re all under the owner’s scrutiny and I’m sure Di Matteo will be judged on a game by game basis. Will he be there come next summer? Who knows.

Tottenham. They’ve had nine. The latest one is AVB. Well I think it’ll be interesting to see what happens there. He’s obviously untried in the EPL and for whatever reason Abramovich decided not to keep him, even after spending £27 million in compensation and wages. Watch this space.

Man. City. They’ve had five so far. Again I have the feeling that the manager is scrutinised on a weekly basis.

Liverpool. They’ve had six. They need stability but I’m sure that already personnel will be on the move both ways – and it is interesting that in the past Liverpool were known as the stable club who always promoted from within.

Newcastle. Have had eleven. Another club now at the mercy of a single owner.

So apart from Arsenal and Man. U the other top teams have chosen not to stick with a Manager for too long.

You can see definitely see a pattern with clubs solely owned and controlled by an individual.

Yes they maybe owned by Companies in the Cayman Islands but at the end of the day one or two people control those Companies and so have the last say in what happens on and of the field. No one will ever convince me other wise that Abramovich or the Glaziers don’t have a say in what happens when it comes to the playing staff, tours, sponsorship wage structures or whether the Manager stays.

The point being that if your club is in the hands of one or two people making the big decisions then you can only hope that they have the clubs best interest at heart and not their own.

So not exactly a stable employment environment for a manager unless you’re very successful. That said I’m sure that if SAF didn’t agree with what was going on then I’m sure he’d be gone as quick as any other manager.

So why do Arsenal stick with Arsène?

Some would argue that he’s lost his touch. His best days are behind him etc etc. I disagree. I think he’s a visionary and he still has a vision for Arsenal. A long term vision. One that includes stability at the club for many years ahead. A largely youthful team which when it clicks will be a dominate force for many a year.

He also helps run the club as it should be these days. Now some supporters will argue that the footballing side is the most important issue here but I disagree slightly. Football’s a huge business these days owning and running a top flight football needs to run as first and foremost a successful business. That gives us stability. Leeds anyone? The collapse a few years back of Liverpool?  Portsmouth?  Even Barcelona to a degree. If they didn’t keep on getting bailed out they wouldn’t be able to survive.

Arsène does what he does best for the club by keeping on finishing in the top four with CL football year on year, even when there are two teams for whom money is no object and while the club are having also to pay attention to the building of the new stadium.  Now he gives us the ability to plan ahead. That should be our priority. Of course it would be great if we were winning the league and a cup every year. What fan doesn’t want that from their team? That’ll come.

If the board did decide to let Arsène go the big question would be: Who replaces him? I think it was only last summer that AVB was being touted as Arsène’s natural replacement.   So glad he went to Chelsea.

But seriously, who would be a great next manager for Arsenal, someone who would deliver the trophies some people crave, while keeping us solvent, without actually having a dip that would take us out of Europe for a year or two?

In the dim and distant past I was told by the best historian I ever had the pleasure to meet (Arthur Hicks, Head of History Poole Grammar School), that there were three approaches to understanding what happened in history. These three approaches, he added, were also a good way of understanding what happens in the world around us today.

Mr Hicks, who had the patience to teach me A level history, never spoke on football and yet, the more I reflect on matters, the more I believe this approach should be seen as giving us a real insight into what is happening with the game we follow.

The approaches to understanding the past, present and the future that were outlined to me in my A level history course were:

1. Inevitability

2. Plans, plots and conspiracies

3. Cock-ups.

To take them very briefly (and you’ll have to forgive the simplifying, otherwise we’ll be here all day and night)…

The “Inevitability” approach suggests that by and large it doesn’t matter what you do, the outcomes are bound to happen. It is the Marxist approach of historic inevitability (the workers revolution will triumph because capitalism is full of contradictions). Christianity has the same vision – it doesn’t matter what mankind does, ultimately the story told in Revelations will come to pass. I suspect Islam and Judaism are of the same inclination but I am not qualified to say.

Plans, plots and conspiracies suggest that politicians, football club owners, players, agents and the rest of us, work out what they want, and then work out the best way of getting there. It is an obvious part of life. I want a new job so I read the lists of job offers. Mr Wenger sees that football is moving in a particular way, and from his analysis decides that ever faster moving attacking mid-fielders and wide front-men is the way to victory, and so focusses on finding and buying them. The plan becomes a plot or conspiracy if others become secretly involved.

As for Cock-ups, this is the bit we normally ignore, but upon which Mr Hicks placed a strong emphasis. He used the example of the Gun Power Plot of 1605 – a failed assassination attempt against King James I of England by a group of English Catholics involving the blowing up of Parliament. A conspiracy because lots of men were involved, and a cock-up because it all went wrong and the Protestants became even stronger.

I am not going to suggest that Inevitability has any part to play in football, but I do think that much of football is to be explained by “Plans, plots and conspiracies” and that many of them turn into “cock-ups.”

The Malaga story is a perfect example. You’ll recall Malaga got into a financial mess and Sheikh Abdullah Al-Thani of the Qatari Royal Family became the new owner.

Then on 1st June 2011 the Club signed a deal with Unesco to become an ambassador of peace, equality and sporting values amongst young people all over the world. The following season the club gained fourth place in the League and qualified for the Champs League for the first time ever.

But somehow the owner lost interest, players wages were not paid, transfer fees were not honoured, and as I write this it seems we have signed Santi Cazorla for whom Malaga still owe money to Villarreal CF.

So, this is a plan gone wrong – a cock-up. Was it a conspiracy also? In effect a conspiracy only requires two or more people working together to do something underhand. Was Malaga or its owner, or even Unesco involved in this? Possible because it seems strange that given the wealth of Sheikh Abdullah Al-Thani that he should not pull out. But we don’t know.

There is a strong argument among historians that all plans, plots and conspiracies end up as cock-ups, simply because these plans involve people – and people either get things wrong or have their own interests at heart; interests which are the opposite to those of the original planner.

With this in mind consider Van Persie.

Arsenal don’t offer him a long term contract extension prior to 2010/11 because of his long injury record. The club doesn’t want to be caught out paying a player for another few years who might only put in a few performances each season. They suspect that with another season broken by injury RVP will agree to a deal.

But the plan goes wrong, RVP plays the season of his life, and then asks for a five year extension at £200,000 a week, plus a £10m re-signing on fee. He does this on the basis that Man C, Juve, Chelsea and Man U will fight Arsenal for his services, and the rest of his life will be financially secure. To cover his tracks RVP says this an argument about the vision of the club.

So for Arsenal it is now a cock-up, for RVP it is a plan. No conspiracy in sight.

But Chelsea have no interest, and the others don’t really seem too excited by the idea. Man U step up plans to make Moura their top signing, Man City are worried about unloading players first and are warned by Uefa about FFP, and RVP would have had no idea that just as he was saying no to Arsenal, Agnelli of Juve was talking about the end of the mega transfer + salary deal, which is exactly what RVP had in mind.

So this looks more and more like a second cock-up – Arsenal’s plan went wrong, and now RVP’s plan is going wrong. (Still not a conspiracy since no one suggests that Juve, Man C, Man U, Chelsea all conspired not to buy RVP).

Arsenal have every right not to sell RVP – something that may not have been in RVP’s thinking. One can imagine his agent saying, “of course they’ll deal – look at Cesc and Nasri.” But this year Arsenal are looking firm, and are buying in advance of the season. Two players for sure, one having had the medical, and one at Real Madrid given permission to talk.

Now we see a really bad case scenario – a mega cock-up for RVP. Supposing Arsenal keep him, and he gets injured, or stays fit and has a poor season, which results in him being dropped (Arsenal do have a lot of choice in the forward line now). What then of the £10m signing on fee and £10.4m a year for five years? None. He might even be allowed to leave Arsenal as a free agent and struggle to find a buyer, although Stoke might have him.

If that sounds strange remember that although RVP has put in some staggering performances before last season, he could not be relied upon, because he kept getting injured. So any club interested had to have a top quality back up. A player does not have just his last season – he has his history.

I believe this little tale is typical of football. Plans made by owners, managers, players, agents, endlessly undermined by other parties not doing what is expected, and by events taking their toll.

I know that I am often accused of being a conspiracy theorist, but in fact this is rarely true. If you take the reports on how the vapour transfers have come to be a major force in football, this is not a conspiracy – just normal dirty dealing by a club. They don’t conspire with anyone, just pull some naughty tricks.

Football is, to my mind, one big cock up after another. At the moment Man U and Man C have taken extraordinary gambles with the use of money and with transfers which have paid off. But for Man U the £80m from Ronaldo must almost have gone, and for Man C FFP looms. They need to find a new plan, and with that plan will come some unexpected results, inevitably.

The game in fact is not to eliminate the cock-ups, but to try and reduce them to a minimum.

Every now and then we have received some comments from people about our numbers. I don’t refer to the just abusing comments but people who tried to make a point. And one of the points was and I try to write it down as it has been said a few times:

“As this is an Arsenal site I find it difficult to believe your numbers because the numbers include Arsenal games and therefore the bias from you referee reviewers is shown in the numbers”.

And this was not only said by supporters from other teams but also by Arsenal supporters. So I can say that it was some kind of concern about our numbers. A concern I can understand completely. Of course I know that I and my fellow referee reviewers have done each game with the will to be as impartial as can be. The fact that our reviews are open to see and to consult adds to that of course. Nobody wants to look like a fool so we will not write down a bunch on nonsense because at some point in time it would backfire on us.

Of course there can be disagreement on some decisions we made. I remember Arsenal fans not agreeing with us when we didn’t gave a call to Arsenal because with the rules in hand we disagreed with the “general opinion”. And we have had supporters from other teams who disagreed with a decisions left or right about a game in which their team was involved.

Of course part of this concern could have been lifted by referees who support other teams if they would have joined us. Despite a few appeals, nobody really came to us and offered to help us.

So how can we show you that in fact the Arsenal games were not conclusive in this report?  Well this is what I will try to do from now on in this article.

First of all, we have based our final report on 155 games. Now if we would completely erase all the Arsenal games we would have done 117 games. And that would mean that we would have done 117 games on a total of 342 games (38-38 Arsenal games) and that makes a total of 34.21% of all the PL games. Not as much as the 40% we did in total but still more than 1 game in 3.

We will now give you two tables. An un-weighted and a weighted table. And in this table we will compare the % of correct decisions. The first number you will see is the one with all the games including the Arsenal games. The second number is the one with all the games but with the Arsenal games erased from the database. Next to that we have made a difference between both numbers and included the numbers of games on which this is based. Better see for yourself now and we start with the un-weighted % of correct decisions.

And if you now look at the teams you will see that in most cases there is a difference. And of course it is only normal that there is a difference if you remove part of the database.  But 8 of the differences are less than 1%. Then we have another 7 teams with a difference between 1% and 2%. So in total we have 15 teams (out of 19 as Arsenal doesn’t count) who have a difference in the numbers of less than 2%. That is almost 79% of the teams falling in to this category.

4 Teams have a bigger difference. But of course, as we have shown before, when a ref puts bias in a game it is obvious that there can be big changes if we remove that game. The biggest swing is found in Fulham but in one of those games we had ref Probert who got the lowest score of any ref in the season if I remember correctly. So it is obvious that this has a great impact on the numbers from Fulham. For Aston Villa we see a reverse situation as in the Arsenal game the ref did a great job and by removing this the number for Aston Villa goes down.

But the most important line is the last line we put in bold and I will repeat it for you.

Average difference on 19 teams: 0,674%

Because with or without the Arsenal games there is only a difference of 0.674% in total on the final outcome of the % of correct decisions.

Yes there is a difference but it is nothing more than that. In general there is less than a difference of 1%.

But for those who have been following us over ref and whistle in the past months or years you know that when there are un-weighted numbers we also have weighted numbers. So wait a second and find out those numbers also and the table has the same build up as the previous one.

As usual the fluctuations when we put weight on the decisions is bigger. This is of course because in the first table each decision only counts for a 0 or a 1. But in the weighted table it can be 0, 1, 2 or 3. Hence the possible bigger difference in some numbers.

We now have 7 teams with a difference less than 1%. And another 3 teams with a difference lower than 2%. Again the explanation that has been given after the un-weighted table can be applied here.  When a ref had a rubbish game this even gets a bigger effect in these numbers when we delete those games.

And yet again I want to draw your eyes to the most important number in this table:

Average difference on 19 teams : 0,503%.

So even when we put weight in the decisions we only see a difference in total between the table that includes the Arsenal games and the one without the Arsenal games of just 0.5%.

So hiding yourselves behind the fact that as this is an Arsenal site and that it is down to our bias that has given the results we have found looks a bit easy.

And if you really want to see that number of not even 1% as proof of us having some kind of bias, be my guest. You can take each number from now one and look back at them and add 1% to it. Or take 1% away from it. If you really want to do this you can take the numbers that way.  It will slightly change the final number. But it doesn’t change the final outcome of our reviews.

What was wrong, stays wrong. What was good, stays good.

And the one things that comes out of this comparison is that if there was bias it was such a small bias that we can be proud of the way our referee reviewers have done their job.

I dare even say categorically that this slight difference means that even in the Arsenal games our referee reviewers have done all what is humanly possible to keep their bias away from the reviews.

And I just want to ask you to give this thought some consideration:  just imagine that our referee reviewers did their job in an almost non-human perfect way and that our numbers FOR ALL TEAMS were correct. And if you still are not convinced about the job our referee reviewers did, I can only challenge you to come up with your own reviews. I can only tell you to challenge our reviews as they are out there in the open.

And if you don’t want to do this, or if you are not able to do this, then the only option you have is to accept that what we have done is something that nobody has done before. Like it or hate it. But that is a fact.

Next in our series we will give you all the different league tables with all the teams in it. In this articles you will be able to see who done good and who seen worse by the refs in one blink of an eye.

Footnote: As this article goes live, we are working on a scheme that will bring in referees who support other clubs to join us, so that we can have more refs and review more games. The discussions involve bringing in another organisation, and at this point we’ve no idea if we can make this work or how much it will cost us, but we are trying.  We’ll keep you informed.

Man Utd has got Chevrolet as a sponsor. Big news. Lot’s of shouting. Lots of puffed out chests.

But what you don’t read in the football press or the blogs is that behind the scenes, all hell is breaking loose. And the story is getting well, rather fishy.

Chevrolet is owned by General Motors Co. General Motors marketing chief is Joel Ewanick and he has just been fired, just two years after he joined the company to lead an overhaul of its marketing strategy and just having completed the Man Utd deal.

Reuters, no less, have said that a source with inside knowledge of the matter has told them that Ewanick failed to properly report financial details about the deal.

Now, of course that could be a slip of the mind. “Oh yes, sorry, I just did the biggest sponsorship deal in the history of football and, blow me down, I forgot to tell you how much money we are paying the club.”

Hmmmm.

When asked about the source’s observations on the sponsorship deal, Ewanick said in an email that he could not comment.

GM then came out and said that Ewanick’s departure was “effective immediately”. No hanging around, no golden handshake, no gardening leave, he’s out, sacked, gone, vanquished, removed. He will be replaced on an interim basis by Alan Batey, the head of U.S. sales and service.

The GM announcement says,

“Ewanick failed to meet the expectations that the company has for its employees.” That was Greg Martin, their spokesperson. He declined to elaborate.

Ewanick was made vice president and head of GM’s U.S. marketing in May 2010. He said, “It has been a privilege & honour to work with the GM Team and to be a small part of Detroit’s turnaround. I wish everyone at GM all the best.”

So what happened?

The FT continues, “As recently as 2006, Vodafone was paying only about £8m a year to sponsor the club’s kit. It was followed by AIG, which paid £14.1m a year between June 2007 and June 2010.”

Now as the FT says, sponsorship revenues are on the rise, which is why the end of the Arsenal sponsorship deals over the next two years is very exciting news.  There’s a lot of new money coming in to the club.

But what is going on with Man Utd?

We know that Manchester United have aborted listings in Hong Kong and Singapore, and then bailed out of New York on a technicality after running old financial reports.

We know that a number of Manchester United employees will be getting mega bonuses out of the listing on the NY stock exchange when it finally happens.

We know that these shares will never pay any dividend or have any power or influence over the club (the family retains that) – it is the model that Mr. Usmanov has suggested for Arsenal, as I understand it. Indeed the FT said, in a completely different article, “The question is, why on earth anyone would be prepared to buy [Man U], given the disregard in which the Glazers seem to hold their potential investors.”

And we know that (according to the FT) “Manchester United said annual revenue from the Chevrolet shirt sponsorship agreement would be $70m in the first season, rising 2.1 per cent a year until it ends in the 2020-21 season. In addition, it will receive about $18.6m in fees from GM in each of the 2012-13 season and 2013-14 season under the terms of our new shirt sponsorship agreement.”

But…

Having been talking about Vapour Transfers, could we also be seeing Vapour Sponsorship? Of course, I have no inside information and I don’t know anything concrete about this, so I make no allegation – just turn in my usual round of guesswork.  So…

Over seven years since the Glazers moved in, they have revalued the club from £790m to £3 bn. That is not real money, just the valuation based on the shares they create.

The company is listed in the Cayman Islands which means there are no requirements for independent directors to oversee the owners. There are no plans to pay a dividend and there is no real knowledge as to what is happening within the company.

My thought in wandering down this by-way is this: the Glazers do say funny things, which are not quite as they seem, which leads one to disbelieve all they say.  So for example in the NY listing prospectus they say, when claiming that one in seven people in the world “follow” Man Utd:

“We and Kantar Media included in the definition of ‘follower’ a respondent who either watched live Manchester United matches, followed highlights coverage or read or talked about Manchester United regularly.”

So according to a survey the club paid Kantar Media for, United has 659 million followers. But there is a discrepancy in this, many of us may watch highlights of Man U matches, but we may be Arsenal or Liverpool or Chelsea supporters. Some Liverpool fans do this twice a season – when Man Utd play Liverpool.  And that makes them a follower?!

Now if you are going to put out stuff like this, then who is to say what else you are going to do behind all those locked doors in the Cayman Islands?

I don’t know why GM sacked their man as he concluded the Man Utd deal, and I have no evidence, so all I can do is speculate.  The reason could be…

a) Because they took one look at the Man Utd prospectus and thought – “you’re having a laugh” and knew that they didn’t want to deal with that bunch of owners – but then they found they were locked in.

b) Because they knew that the price hike for sponsorship was insane and that they would never get their money back in extra sales – but found out too late.

c) Because Man Utd is quickly becoming the sort of business which, through its share and other dealings, is exactly the sort of company you don’t want a decent firm to be associated with

d) Because the deal, as expressed, doesn’t exist – it is vapour. Yes, the Chevrolet will appear on Man Utd shirts, but the amount changing hands won’t be remotely like the amount quoted. Those figures are quoted just to help the share issue along. It will be hard to find out the truth because the deal doesn’t start for a while, and one end of it is in the Cayman Islands where it is hard to find anything.

e) Manchester United’s operating profit has fallen for the last three years and is now at half of what it was three years ago. And this was why the FT ran the headline “Investors in Man Utd risk losing their shirts”. Chevvy weren’t pleased with that one.

It might, of course all be coincidence, but we could combine all this flim-flam with our recent report on Manchester United and referees.

Untold Arsenal has a team of qualified referees who have reviewed more than 40% of the EPL games from last season. The reviews themselves were based on full match video footage with the advantage of video technology features such as slow motion and pause.

By reviewing those 155 games we have made a database of more than 7000 decisions that have been judged by our panel of dedicated and qualified referees.

The numbers you will see (from Untold) are based on those decisions and those reviewed games.

After giving all the numbers of the different teams and how they did under the refs and in the games we reviewed it could be that you will say: well this is an Arsenal website so no wonder your numbers show an anti-Arsenal bias. Some people might say:  you are biased and I don’t believe you and I will stick my head further in the sand. And of course you are entitled to do think this and to stick you head in the sand.

But before you ingest too much silicon dioxide it might be interesting to see at how other people stand in this matter. So let us then look at what people have found who are not Arsenal supporters.

And to do this we should turn our attention to the website debatabledecisions. You can find them if you click on this link  http://www.debatabledecisions.com/

Now they are not Arsenal supporters, in fact in their panel is no Arsenal supporter at all. You can find the names of the people who sit in their panel and check out their twitter account and you can see there that they don’t support Arsenal. So hopefully that is good enough basis for an unbiased source.

Let us try to check out what we found and what they found.

First of all, if you don’t want to look for it yourself, I want to explain how they work and then you will see the different approach compared to our way of working. They base their decisions on what is shown on Match of the Day. So if an incident is not shown on Match of the Day, it is not counted in their decision table. And that is a big handicap for the debatable decisions website. Because I have seen it on a few occasions that when I did a whole game as a reviewer and then saw the highlights on MOTD that important and key decisions were left out.

I will give you an example of this. In the game Everton-Arsenal with the score at 0-1 for Arsenal, Everton scored a goal that was ruled out for offside. That was a wrong decision. The goal should have been given and it should have been 1-1. Now, on the debatable decisions table they count it like that. And that is because on MOTD they didn’t show an incident in the second half when Rosicky was very clearly pushed and tripped in the Everton penalty area. It was a blatant foul and a crystal clear penalty. But because it wasn’t shown on MOTD (wonder why it wasn’t shown?), the people from the debatable decisions website didn’t take this in their tables.

But apart from that they do their job in the way they do it. And maybe the most important thing is to see if we can discover trends in what we have found and what they have found. So I will now compare the debatable decisions table and put the league position number next to it from our reviewing system. And this is then what you get:

And now it is getting interesting. Because the team we found that benefited most from the refs their mistakes was Stoke and the same was found by the debatable decisions website. And we found that Arsenal was the team that suffered most from the wrong decisions and guess what…the debatable decisions website had the same findings.

And another thing is that we showed that in our numbers Stoke got more decisions in their favour away from home and guess what… the people from the debatable decisions found the same. Coincidence you say? I call it great research and hard work from our referee reviewing team.

So you can call us biased about Arsenal but isn’t it a big coincidence that we and they agree on the fact that Arsenal has been hit the hardest from wrong decisions? And that Stoke was favoured?

It does show an important trend and that is what makes this comparison so important. I also notice that for a lot of teams the place in both tables are close to each other. And most teams are standing in the same half of the table on both occasions. This is the case for 14 teams out of 20. There are only 2 teams where the difference in both tables is more than 10 places. Those teams are Aston Villa and Liverpool. And some of those differences could be down to the fact that the choice of games can have its influence and the fact we only did 6 Aston Villa games.

Another big difference team is Manchester United. But for those who take a closer look at our review results, they will notice that we agree on the fact that United had some major decisions going against them. We even showed that a lot of the advantage they get is from the small decisions in the field. And then we also have the little fact that well …MOTD doesn’t show all the decisions. I do think however if you put those two tables together you will get a rather accurate picture of how things were in the PL last season.

This is how it would look then and the team in position 1 was the most favoured based on our two different tables and the team in position 20 was the least favoured.

After putting to bed the false words ‘it all evens out at the end of the season” for a lot of teams, we can now announce officially that there is something very spooky when it comes to referees.

Because I don’t think there are two teams more separate in the PL than Arsenal and Stoke. Arsenal is known for their put the ball on the floor and play a technical style of football.  And Stoke for what some call a rugby style of football. I will put it gently and say that they are famous for being able to kick the ball high and far up field and run after it.

Stoke players; well at times they do tend to get a bit physical. I think Ramsey will call this an understatement. So would Adebayor feel it. Their players are big, strong and tall and the Arsenal players are relative small and weak (in a way of speaking).

One could say that Arsenal wants to play the game within the rules (yes they will make fouls that is inevitable and is part of the game) but they want to have a game where the ref applies the rules so they can play their technical game. And Stoke wants to rough up their opponents, push and shove, walk the border lines when it comes to the rules. They have brought time-wasting to a new level with the towels being brought out for every throw. Pushing and shoving keepers from right to left when they want to take a throw.

You can’t find two more opposite styles. And then it is so strange to see that the team that is bending the ruled all the time is getting most of the wrong calls  from the refs and most the wrong decisions in their favour.

This brings up a few questions.

Might it be that the refs are silently in favour of the “kick them off the field” tactics ? Now that would be an outrageous thing. The refs should be there to make sure that the laws of the games are applied and they should be the one that should make sure that the players are protected on the field.  If this is the case then the refs should be removed immediately as they do not do what Fifa and Uefa want them to do.

Another possibility could be that the refs are afraid of Stoke. I know this doesn’t sound a possibility but could it be that the fact that those big defenders who kick and push and shove are bringing fear to the refs? I know it sounds not possible but there has to be some explanation. If it would be the case then the refs also have to be removed as they are not fit to wear the referee shirt.

I must say that when we started this reviewing I didn’t know what we would find. But this is one of the most unexpected results of our search. Not just the fact that we at Untold found this big difference between Arsenal and Stoke. But that it is confirmed by an unbiased source.

And this is something that the PGMOL needs to examine and needs to find an answer and most of all: PUT IT RIGHT FOR NEXT SEASON!

And about our numbers being biased? Well they could be biased to a certain degree. Our referee reviewers have tried to do their utmost best to not being biased in the games we reviewed. But still there could have been some bias. But we are open about it. We are clear about it. And so you could take the Arsenal numbers with a pinch of salt even.

But that ladies and gentleman does not explain then why the findings of Untold Arsenal and those from the Debatable Decisions website are the same for a large part. And that does not explain why Arsenal has been hit that hard by the referees!

You can shove us at Untold Arsenal aside by saying we are biased. But if that is the only reason to push our findings out of the way, you cannot do the same with the debatable decisions website. As they do not have one Arsenal supporter in their panel.

So it is back  to you now: do you want to stick your head in the sand and ignore all this? That is an option you can go for. But be warned:  silicon dioxide can be dangerous.  Don’t say we didn’t warn you when you cannot breath any more.

I have also suggested that since the English won’t play, the Scottish Third Division might be given a boost by having Arsenal Reserves in it, but on this one the footballing world has remained silent. The former France technical director Gerard Houllier said, “In England, you lose a lot of players between 18 and 21,” he said. “The two countries who are failing are England and Italy. I knew one or two players [when manager] at Aston Villa who did not have enough games to play at the top level. Between 18 and 20 there is nothing. In France when they don’t play on a Saturday, they can play for the reserves the next day.”

Arsenal have tried to compensate by using the loan system more and more vigorously, and we’ve often spoken here of the fact that Lorient is now increasingly looking like an Arsenal in the French League. But the reserves and youth team are taken as seriously as possible, and certainly more seriously than some clubs take the whole affair. Tottenham, Manchester City, QPR, Stoke for example have not played in a reserve league of late. ‘Arry pulled Tottenham out of all reserve competitions, and as for the others, I am not sure what they have been doing.

Up to last season, Arsenal played in The Premier Reserve League which started out in 1999 replacing the old Football Combination and the Central League. But no one was very happy with it and the format was re-organised time and time again. Also, because Arsenal tend to promote youngsters quickly and make great use of the loan system, they tended to use it as a chance for up coming players to experience competitive games, rather than going all out to win the league. While some clubs put unwanted members of their first team squad to play in the reserves, Arsenal never did this – using it totally for players who were over age for the Premier Academy League.

Now everything is changing. We now have the Barclays Under-21 Premier League, and there is the Next Gen knock out cup for teams across Europe. Suddenly, being a reserve is going to be a lot more fun.

Arsenal’s Under-21s will start this season with two fixtures at Emirates, against Bolton Wanderers on Monday, August 20 (kick-off 7pm) and Blackburn on Saturday, August 25 (kick-off 2pm). Teams can use three outfield players over the age of 21 and one over-age goalkeeper.

NextGen Series matches will be played at Underhill Stadium starting with Marseille on Wednesday, August 29 (kick-off 7pm). NextGen is in effect an Under-19 version of the Champions League (although teams are allowed to select up to three Under-20 players in their squad) with group stages followed by the knock out round from January onwards. Marseille are the first opponents to experience Barnet on August 29 (kick-off 7pm) before we play to Olympiacos on September 12.

Back in the new Reserve League, the 23 clubs have been divided into 3 groups. The top two teams in each group along with the two best 3rd place teams, will move into an ‘elite round’ of games to be played after Christmas. The other teams will then be divided up into 2 groups also for further games after Christmas.

Group A:
Arsenal, Blackburn, Bolton, Everton, Norwich, Reading, West Brom and West Ham.

Group B: 
Newcastle, Tottenham, Southampton, Stoke, Manchester United, Watford, Sunderland and Aston Villa.

Group C:
Fulham, Chelsea, Manchester City, Liverpool, Middlesbrough, Crystal Palace and Wolves.

Just so as you see the sort of players we are currently playing in our reserve side, here is the squad for saturday’s game: Chesham United v Arsenal, kick off 3pm.

1. James Shea
2. Hector Bellerin
3. Elton Monteiro
4. Zachari Fagan
5. Jernade Meade
6. Isaac Hayden
7. Jack Jebb
8. Kristoffer Olsson
9. Josh Rees
10. Philip Roberts
11. Nigel Neita
12. Martin Angha
13. Josh Vickers
14. Chuba Akpom
15. Alfred Mugabo
16. Samir Bihmoutine
17. Austin Lipman
18. Glen Kamara

Here are the details for the season proper…

In the last few days, we have been discussing the collapse of the transfer market – and would you believe it, just as I get ready for the final part in the series of articles on Vapour Transfers, we find that Santi Cazorla has undergone his medical and is about to be signed for £16m from Málaga.   The loan of Nuri Sahin from Real Mad is still under discussion, but could be on.  As for Cazorla, there is talk of him playing against FC Köln.

We covered the Cazorla and Sahin stories a while back in one of the regular updates on transfers that Untold does, and Málaga has been in our sites since we started the Billionaire files.  If ever you wanted an example of something going seriously amiss – and if ever there was a warning to Chelsea, Man C, PSG and the rest, then this club is it.

The press, a little behind Untold on this, but gradually getting into the habit of reading our columns I see, are now saying that Málaga is like a soap opera.  Maybe, or maybe it is a bit more serious than that.

Anyway assuming there are no last minute what-nots, Cazorla joins Lukas Podolski and Olivier Giroud but Cazorla looks even better.  This could be a player we’ll love and love again.

(Incidentally there are moves the other way: Benik Afobe has gone to Bolton Wanderers for the whole season and there is talk of Ryo doing another loan spell.

So, transfers all the way round – just as I was saying that The transfer market is on the edge of collapse on the basis that prices had got out of control, and the Billionaire clubs were just buying more players than they could actually play.  As a result, some players were finding themselves at clubs and then unable to get games.  I also referred back to the Flamini Effect in which players are tempted to move in the belief (talked up by their agent) that they will play every match and become stars. Given that this is the anniversary of Theirry Henry’s signing (see the Arsenal History Site article for more on that), it gave me the chance to point out that each time Henry played for Barca it cost them nearly half a million quid. What a shame.

Anyway, in the second article in the series on transfers I talked about Vapour Transfers  and noted three types of such moves:

1: The Distraction – in which a club seriously looking at buying a player will slip out a story that it is actually after someone quite different, just to keep the hounds at bay

2: The Deception – in which there is no deal.  This is all an invention, set up to confuse the opposition clubs.  A DC judge, on watching this happen in the IT industry described the process as  “a practice that is deceitful on its face and everybody in the community knows it.”

It goes like this.  Everton want to buy Peter Poppit.  But Liverpool slip out the story that Chelsea looked at Poppit and decided he was ok, but had an injury problem (that is all lies – they never looked at all).  So they turned their attention to Dirk Frog.   They rate Frog, but Frog is concerned he won’t get enough games at Chelsea, so is hesitating in signing.  Everton lose their focus and start chasing Frog.  Eventually they find that Chelsea never looked at Poppit, and never looked at Frog. But by then the transfer window is coming to a close and Poppit, fearing that no one wants him, has gone to Wolverhampton, who are thrilled with the capture.

(This is of course a mythical example – but you see how it works).

3: The Destructive Expectation - Here the story goes around that a big time operator (we’ll call them Fix FC) wants to buy a top player (we’ll call him Rip Van Pobble). The story is untrue but it creates an expectation.  Rip, who was ready to sign a new contract, then stops because he thinks someone else is after him.

The top clubs really can’t be arsed with the player like Rip because he has had so many injuries, but the expectation builds, and the clubs know that if they don’t deal, the press and bloggers will write that the club have no ambition, or that they are slipping backwards, or that like Malaga the money has gone.

But if Rip is injured all season the manager is in trouble, given that everyone knows of Rip’s injuries.  If the manager doesn’t sign and doesn’t win the league, everyone will say he didn’t have the right vision.  He’s in trouble however he moves.

So that’s all bad enough, but there is more…

Vapour Transfer 4: The Agent’s Game

These first three Vapour Transfers are created by clubs either to put stop rivals nosing around a deal about to happen, or to distract a club so that a deal that might happen doesn’t, or they try to tangle up a club thinking about signing someone they don’t want or need.  The word “marquee” was devised to apply to transfers and players just to help Vapour Transfers along.   Think back – we didn’t have “marquee” signings four years ago.

But clubs are not the only ones involved.  The media, players agents and bloggers (some of whom are little more than the media’s lap dogs) also get involved – and that’s what we see here.

Imagine: The Daily Sniff is in financial trouble due to declining readership, several members of its journalist staff being arrested for phone tapping, a plethora of legal cases, and a decline in advertising.  So, to fill pages at no expense, they make up transfer stories.

Jack Dealmaker is an agent who, like all agents, gets a fair old percentage of the salary of his players plus part of the signing on fee.  He has a vested interest in his players moving around as much as possible – and if they can’t move then at least signing a new contract with a new loyalty fee.  So Jack Dealmaker and the Daily Sniff have a good reason to talk to each other.

Now let’s take the famous Daily Mirror story that I quoted in the last article in which on 6 June 2008  it ran the headline “Arsenal line up shock move for Peter Crouch”

Everyone knew that this was tripe, but what it did do was make some of the not-so-bright directors and managers of smaller clubs think, “hey Crouch is available”.  They were expected to guess that the story was nonsense, but to take the possibility of a move seriously and so start asking.  If not now, then maybe in a year or two.  A marquee signing for a little club.  In doing this they were merely providing background defence should Revenue and Customs get involved – see below.

These stories can be spotted because of their language (“high alert”) and their repetition.  Try this one in the Metro, “Reports from Italy have suggested Juventus are lining up a shock move for Liverpool striker Peter Crouch, as a replacement for David Trezeguet, who could be on his way out of the San Siro”.

It is similar to the Mirror story because it is vital in this business that those “in the game” know which game is being played.

But the question can be raised: why on earth go to such lengths as to persuade the Mirror and Metro to run this tripe when a phone call to various clubs would tip them off.  OK, there are rules that say that contacts about transfers have to be club to club, but these rules fell into disrepute long ago, and quite honestly among the clubs, the FA is held in such disdain that no one cares a toss about them.

But by running unattributable stories in the press (which the papers like because it allows them to suggest they have their own “sources” inside each club feeding them info), it is easy to beef up the story and get one club bidding against another. In effect, what the agent wants is for clubs to come to him saying “will your man go for this?”  The agent does not want to go to the clubs directly, because what he really wants is everyone involved in a bidding war.

Vapour Transfer 5: the fraud

However there is more.  Let us suppose that somewhere out in the great wide world of football there is a manager or a club owner who is bent.  Hard to believe I know, but just stay with me on this one. Maybe he is involved in money laundering. Maybe he is just involved in shipping drugs.  Maybe it’s fake currency.  Maybe he is running a far right wing political party. Maybe he’s a banker.

One of the ways he can do his deals, moving money around as he needs, is through football transfers.  In such a case he needs transfers more than the club or the player need movement.  Of course a sudden movement of a third rate player for far more money than he is worth looks highly suspicious – and that is exactly what our neo-fascist drug dealing banker wants.  But supposing the agent, player, club and the rest can point to media speculation.   “What do you mean, he’s not worth £10m – Arsenal were going to pay more than that.  It said so in the Daily Prat.”

“Don’t talk tripe,” says our man at Customs and Excise.  “Crouch would never go to Arsenal.”

“As it turns out, no,” says the criminal interest rate fixing banker with a penchant for Nazi regalia.  “But the fact that they looked shows there is more to Crouch than meets the kneecap.”

And the Customs and Excise man, knowing little of the inner workings of football, lets the matter drop.  It was in the papers after all (see above).

So this is the world of transfers.  Santi Cazorla is moving because the billionaire owner of his club has suddenly failed to come up with enough money to allow the club to continue in the Spanish league.  The owner is stunningly rich – rich beyond anything you or I could imagine.  And we are asked by the press to believe that his failure to sort out the club is due to his eccentricity and lack of understanding of Uefa rules.

Yeh, right.

Welcome Santi Cazorla, assuming there is no last minute hitch.  And hopefully welcome Nuri Sahin. Welcome to a world of sanity in an ocean of corruption.

All we have to do now is sort out the referees.

The question we can ask now is : did Arsenal got any help from the refs to achieve this big turnaround? Only one place (ok not the only one in fact) to find out: In the Untold referee review that is in front of you. Let’s not waste any more words on this but start at the beginning.

A 100% record for games covered. It can’t get any better we think. Unless being able to get this number for all teams of course.

As we don’t have much response from referees who support other teams the only way forward looks to be: finding a sponsorship. Or finding a company that is interested in this and wants to make a deal with Untold Arsenal. Lets have a look at the possible options to move forward.

If we could find some 5 or 6 extra refs we should be okay to do more games and to come to a score of 100% games reviewed next season.

A sponsorship or a deal with a company who is specialised in game analysis could be the other option. To put my cards on the table: I am willing to listen to any offer that would make it possible to review all the games in the PL. I am willing to stop working my day time job for one season   and dedicate all my time on such a project. Of course my wife and 4 children will need something to eat in that period. I also could use something to eat next season. But any reasonable offer will be listened to.

We just can’t stop it here and call it a day. Not after what we have achieved last season.

So if anyone is reading this and thinks this might be worth to continue: make yourself known.  Or referees: now is the time to make yourself known to us,  if you want to join.

After this last cry for help let us continue with what you came here for: the numbers.

If we look at the numbers of the correct decisions we see that in the un-weighted numbers we get a score of 69.80%. That is more than 2.5% lower than the league average and under the 70%. So this is a bad result itself. But to be honest not the worst in the league.

If we look at the weighted numbers we see that the score is also some 2.5% lower than the league average. The score drops even more.

These numbers are not good at all.  Anything below the 70% score is bad. Not good enough for the PL. But they are not the worst of the league in fact.

Let us see at the different type of decisions.

The goal decisions are just above the 90% line. More than 1% below the league average. This is not good enough as has been said a few times before.

The offside decisions are better than the league average. Better with 0.5% approximate. But a score of 90.698% is far away from the 99% claimed by Mike Riley.

The other decisions are bad. The normal score was 71.96% in average. The score from Arsenal is around 4.5% lower than the league average and ends up with a very low score of 67,412%.

The penalty decisions also are bad. A score of 56% is more than 6% below the league average. This is like referees throwing up a coin to decide on a penalty decisions. The chance they get the same score is almost as high as it was last season.

The red cards decisions is almost the same as the league average. A league average which is not acceptable at all.

And if we look at the yellow cards they are 3% better than the league average. So finally a number that is really better than the league average. But a score of 59% is not really that good.

And now comes the final numbers that really matter: how was the bias in the wrong calls in Arsenal games?

As has been said before when you go away in the PL you can expect a negative bias of -1.826 bias points. Arsenal had to face a bias of -10.054.

At home you can expect a positive bias of +1.826 bias points. Arsenal didn’t have a positive bias at all at home. In stead they got a negative bias of -8.264. So it doesn’t matter if Arsenal play at home or not: the bias is always against them.

So no real surprise to see that the total bias score is -9.158 bias points in total.

Let us put the weight on the decisions. And then we can expect a negative away bias of -2.619. Arsenal had to overcome a negative bias of -14.422 bias points.

At home they had to overcome a negative bias of -12.632. The league average is usually a positive bias of +2.619 bias points.

The total negative bias for Arsenal in the weighted numbers is -13.527 bias points. No other team in the league has or had to face such numbers.

Let us move to the referees.

We had 17 refs in the 38 games. All had a negative bias score against Arsenal.

The only ref who comes close to having no bias is Mark Clattenburg. He made some mistakes in his games but they didn’t have a big impact and it was rather even spread over the two teams on the field. I thank him for that. I even remember him having an Arsenal games with almost no mistakes at all.

Lee Probert

The negative refs is a long list. A too long list to be good. I see that Lee Probert was the most biased anti-Arsenal ref in the last season. By a far distance compared to the rest. We had 8 refs with a bias of more than 10 bias points. This is totally unacceptable Mr. Riley.

I just suggest you look up the names of your favourite ref yourself and see how he fared in the Arsenal games.

If you still can take it we can have a look at the weighted decisions and the refs.

Well the picture remains largely the same. Only Mark Clattenburg stands out as a pariah amongst his fellow referees as the one and only fair ref in the PL.

12 referees have a negative bias score of more than 10 bias points. With again Lee Probert standing out as the most biased ref despite having some strong candidates to challenge him for that first place.

These results are so depressing that I really don’t want to talk about it any more. Let us see how the season went along.

If there is one thing clear from this last graphic it is the fact that last season Arsenal has worked a miracle. I have shown when we reviewed other teams in their reports how difficult it is to win a game when the ref has a big negative bias against said teams.

If we look at the bias lines we see too many big lines going down. And we only see 13 games in which the negative bias was below the 10 negative bias points.  This means that in 65% of the games Arsenal had to overcome a negative bias of more than 10 bias points.

These numbers show that Arsenal not only has made the big turnaround of the season. No, for me they show that what we have seen was nothing else but a miracle. Arsenal having finished in third place  is just a plain miracle.

FINAL CONCLUSION

We only have seen acceptable referee performances in 13 Arsenal games this season.  And to put something to bed straight away: the biggest defeat I have ever witnessed of Arsenal in my living days on this planet was one of those 13 normal refereed games. This has nothing to do with Arsenal winning or losing a game.

It is no longer a feeling but from now on I consider it as a fact that Arsenal is not liked by the refs and by the PGMOL.

And I want to say it again: I don’t want the refs to give decisions to Arsenal. I can accept refs making mistakes. But I only want that those mistakes are spread even over the two teams on the field. When Arsenal is on the field this clearly does not happen.

Mike Riley: you got some explaining to do.

Of course you could say:  well this is an Arsenal blog so no wonder you come up with such numbers. You could say: your numbers are biased.

Well if you really have that opinion I can only point you at the next article we will publish in our referee review. An article in which I will show and prove to you that what we have found is not just some invention of an Arsenal blog.

If all goes well this should be published shortly after this article.  If you don’t believe this, then you will have to prove to me where we were wrong. There are only some 7000 decisions to criticize and I challenge each one of you to do this. The reviews are on the website, you can check each decision.

And look at the other article and if you still don’t believe us at Untold Arsenal because we are an Arsenal website it is time to show your numbers and it is time to say to us when you will believe anyone. Or is it just that you don’t want to believe that nothing can be wrong with the referees in the PL.

If you think that by reaching the end of the team reviews you have seen it all … don’t count on it. We got more to come. Much more in the next days and weeks. We ain’t finished yet Mike.

Has Stewart Robson been sacked by Arsenal TV?

I ask because a reader of untold recently said this, and I had heard it elsewhere.  He turned up doing his commentaries on ESPN during the Far East tour, and a rather eccentric web site (if I might use that phrase) ‘Arsenal Truth’ ran the story that he had gone, following its usual approach of blaming Wenger.

But as you may know, I do like to find something a little more concrete, and tracing the story back to Talk Sport didn’t really give me that. Talk Sport is a user of Mr Robson’s unique commentary style, so presumably they do have a direct line to him, but even so, since most of what they say seems to be wrong (especially their transfer rumours), I am not convinced.

I turned therefore to Wikipedia, which occasionally can be quite helpful, but there too I hit a brick wall.  The entry for Mr Robson includes:

“In 2003, he spent a short spell as a first-team coach at Southend United, and in 2004, he joined Rushden & Diamonds as an assistant manager. He is now the Diamonds’ technical director.^“

The problem is that the Diamonds (a club dear to my heart as when Arsenal were playing away, I would go and watch them make their way up through the leagues to the third tier, and then sadly down again) were bankrupted in 2011, and so that entry is clearly, at least one year out of date.

[Can I pause just to introduce you, in case you are not familiar with it, to the insane world of football in England beyond the Football League.  In Northamptonshire, we have Kettering Town, who now play at the Diamonds old ground in Irthlingborough.  We have AFC Rushden and Diamonds who play at Wellingborough's ground.  No one plays at Kettering's ground in Kettering.  Corby Town play in Corby, just next to the Rangers - ie Glasgow Rangers - supporters club.  That's Northamptonshire in the English East Midlands.  You get the picture.]

So what of Robson?  There was a petition around asking for him to be removed from the Arsenal players, and it is in the understanding of that, that one begins to get the picture.

Robson, great Arsenal player though he was, used his time on Arsenal’s on line TV service to be highly critical of Arsenal players and indeed Mr Wenger, often using phrases such as “this is something Wenger has got to sort out,” over and over and over and over again.  If you watched the EPSN coverage of the Far East tour, you would have heard Robson go apoplectic over Santos – it was fairly typical of his coverage.

Now it can be argued that this is ok, he is telling it like he sees it.  That is what a journalist is supposed to do.  And that would be fine, but for two reasons.

The first is that we are surrounded by media for whom telling it like it is, involves outright and constant criticism of Arsenal in general and the despising of Mr Wenger in particular.  I guess, for people who are themselves openly anti-Wengerian that’s fine, but given that the media is so anti-Wenger, and given that there are quite a few people who go to the matches at the Ems who are totally pro-Wenger, there is a desire for a channel that will balance the opinion.

This is even more so given that as we approach  the new season we have the Sun looking like it will continue its virulent anti-Arsenal approach, we have the Guardian radically changing its position from last year to take up a view that is similar to the Sun’s only with longer words, and we have the Telegraph edging towards the Guardian’s position, for all the world looking like a paper whose sports editor is nervous about being left out on the fringe.

Meanwhile 606, when it returns on Radio 5, is expected to allow itself once again to be the mouthpiece of the AAA, and Talk Sport has never shown any interest in being anywhere other than anti-Wenger – which is why Mr Robson has such a natural habitat there.

On TV, we have Match of the Day which is persistently anti-Arsenal, and ESPN which is so utterly anti-Arsenal than even the appearance of Mr Robson doesn’t actually take it much further away from the centre.

In such a scenario, having a pro-Arsenal commentary on Arsenal’s own TV station was something quite a few people (including me) wanted, and so it wouldn’t be surprising if Robson was moved along in order to give the pro-Wengerians just one source of information to our taste.  (Of course the AAA will cast this as a typical bit of Wengerian micro management, suggesting that Robson was right, and that the Wengerians can’t stand the truth.  But the fact that this very openly pro-Wenger site is now getting 750,000 visits a month suggests there is a reason for some more pro-Wenger outlets.)

But as I suggested above, there is second reason why Robson’s comments are unwelcome.  He speaks with deep conviction, but without either evidence or background to back him up.  Yes he was a fine player for the club, but as I noted above, his period in management was tiny.  So his knowledge about how to manage is extremely limited, and I believe, based on a failure in management.

This does not stop him commenting on tactics, his favourite topic, any more than it stops me commentating on tactics, but at least I try and make it clear that anything I say is nothing more than my opinion as a supporter.  Robson has never been able to do that.  All he does is say its wrong, its wrong, its wrong, Wenger has got to fix that, if he doesn’t fix that, Arsenal will be in real trouble this season.

And then when each Arsenal season comes to an end, he says, “this is a real problem for Arsenal and Wenger has got to sort this out now or else Arsenal will be in trouble.”

Even if you agree with his approach, you have to admit he is stunningly repetitive.

So, has he gone?  I don’t know.  But if he has, I’ll certainly come back to Arsenal TV.

We will not be able to answer that with a 100% yes or no. But, I think we could come close to an answer by the end of this report.

.

We reviewed 32 games of Manchester City last season. That is 84, 21% of their games in the PL. I think this is a great result of course. I wonder how many Manchester City fans will have realised this before the start of the season and even up till now. An Arsenal blog having referees to cover not just Arsenal games but also almost 84% of Manchester City games. Well we did.

Of course this means there are 6 games missing. 6 games we would have loved to do. But as not all games were on TV we couldn’t do them. And maybe having a few referees more could have helped a bit too. So if you are a ref and think this might be interesting to do next season: please let yourself be know to us and join our ranks.

Let us first see how competent the referees have been. A note to new readers: these numbers have no real connection to the teams involved. Because these numbers are of course of the 32 games Manchester City was in but also about the opponents in those games.

And if you are new I just will tell you that the difference of weighted and un-weighted can be found in these different type of decisions. Other and offside decisions have a weight of 1. Yellow cards have a weight of 2. And goals, penalty and red cards decisions have a weight of 3. This is for your information to understand the difference when we talk about un-weighted or weighted numbers. In the un-weighted version of numbers we gave every decision a weight of 1. In the weighted decisions we put the weight as explained on to the decisions.

So the first numbers are not bad. Not bad at all if you compare to the league average. The league average is giving us some 72.49% correct decisions and here we have a total of 74,75%  So that is 2,26% higher than the league average. But I ask you to think about the fact that this means that 1 decision in 4 decisions was wrong from the ref. I must say I’m not impressed by that number at all. But if you are comfortable with the league average, then this is a good result for the refs.

If we put weight on the decisions we have the same thing. This time the score of the refs in the Manchester City games is 2,37% better compared to the league average. The score of 73,72% still means that refs make one mistake in every 4 decisions and that just doesn’t seem right to me.

Let us now take a look at the different type of decisions that we have covered in these reviews. And again I stress that this has nothing to do with anything going for or against Manchester City. Just the result from the refs in the Manchester City games.

You might be impressed by the fact that 90.265 % of the goal decisions are correct. I’m disappointed as this isn’t even the league average which was 91.753%. People who love the game should know by now that this should be a score of around 99% correct. Goals are the most important thing in football so this should be correct the most. It decides who gets the points. So this should be the most correct type of decision.

Offside decisions….  Mike Riley, the head of the PGMOL claims that this is correct for 99% of the decisions. Well in the games we reviewed from Manchester City we only found 88.550% correct offside decisions. In fairness only a difference of less than 2% compared to the league average but what a distance with the claimed 99%.

The other decisions, which covers most fouls in the field, are some 3% better than the league average. The final result of 75% means that 1 decision in 4 was not correct. But this is better than the league average so well not that bad if we accept the league average as the norm.

The penalty decisions are 7% better than the league average. They come close to the 70% line and that is the minimum line I want to see for any decision from any ref in the PL. So one could be satisfied with that but just after goal decisions comes the penalty decisions as the most important ones. So we should be focusing and working to raise the number of correct calls. So not really bad, but should be better.

Let us take a look at the red cards decisions. The league average was 21,42% correct and for the games with Manchester City in we come to 19%. So even worse than the already unacceptable low league average. Not good is the only thing than can be said about this.

To wrap this up we come to the yellow cards decisions and we see that they are just a bit better than the league average. But better by not even 1% is not something to open a bottle of bubbles and start a wild celebration.

So far all these numbers have been not linked to Manchester City or the opponents. Now we will try to make that difference. From now on we will see how those “mistakes” from the ref were divided between the two teams. In the perfect world from the PGMOL and Mike Riley there will be no difference between the mistakes. Let’s find out.

And what do we see Watson? First of all that we have done 32 games and 16 away from home and 16 at home. So nicely spread.

As our overall league numbers have shown there is a negative away bias when you go away from home of -1.826 bias points.  According to Mike Riley and the PGMOL there is no such thing as home or away bias (there is no bias at all they claim) but we found one over the whole league.

And now we see that Manchester City had a negative away bias against them from -2.750 points. That is almost 1 negative bias point more than the normal average you can expect.  So away from home Manchester City didn’t get a lot of wrong calls going their way. Or better said: they got more things going against them than a team can expect.

The positive home bias you can expect in the PL is +1.826. Manchester City has a positive bias of +2.187. So that is a bit more than the normal home bias. But if we add those two we see that Manchester City has a little negative bias in total.

If we put weight on the decisions we can expect a negative away bias of -2.619. Manchester City had to overcome a negative bias of -4.687.  So that is almost 2 bias points extra against them away from home! So things didn’t go their way in general when away from home.

At home you can expect a weighted home bias of +2.619 points. Manchester City had a positive bias of +3.499 points. So that is almost one bias point extra in their favour at home. So this is also more than the average home bias you can expect.

In total however this leads to a negative bias swing of -0.595 points against Manchester City based on the 32 games we reviewed.

Let us have a look at the different refs who did those games.

We had 14 different refs in the 32 games we did.

8 refs had a negative bias against Manchester City and 5 had a positive bias.

The ref with the most negative bias was Peter Walton. So Manchester City will not be unhappy to know he left for the USA. Michael Oliver also had a big negative swing but just as Walton only did one game. Michael Jones and Lee Mason and Mark Clattenburg also have a too big negative bias to be good.

A bit to my surprise the negative bias from Webb, Foy and Probert is rather small in the un-weighted numbers. Mike Dean has the lowest negative bias against City.

On the positive side we have Atkinson, Marriner and Taylor with a not that big positive bias. Friend and Dowd have a bigger positive bias.

If we put weight on the decisions we see that now we have 6 refs with a negative bias against Manchester City.   Ref Probert had a zero bias score (well done) and we have 7 refs with a positive bias.

The score from Walton looks ridiculous. This is the person who is trying to bring good refereeing to he USA.  Jones, Oliver and Clattenburg have a rather big negative bias. Foy and Webb have a relative small negative bias.

On the positive side we welcome Lee Mason who had a negative un-weighted bias. So he has given them a few big decisions it seems.

The positive score from Mason, Atkinson, Marriner, Friend and Dean is still rather low. The score from Taylor and Dowd has gone up to a score you don’t want to see.

If you look at game 2 you see a big negative bias swing but it didn’t affect the points from City. But in week 5 we saw a dip in the bias and also a dip in the points. If we see a bias at the start it is not a big one. The first real bias in their favour is in week 6.  The bias then is kept somewhat between the +10 and -10.

Around week 14 and 15 Manchester City got two consecutive games with a negative bias. But in week 16 we see that there is a big swing the other way round. In week 23 we see the biggest negative bias swing against Manchester City. They lost that game.

They had a dip in form around weeks 30-32 but the bias was in their favour in those games.

What I do remember on a few occasions was the fact that a few times a Man C player didn’t got sent off when it should have happened.  This is something that can be seen in the high for decisions.

The bias in favour of Manchester City remains rather small in the last 5 games. The negative bias was always bigger in those games. Was someone trying to stop them?

FINAL CONCLUSION

One thing has to be said: apart from the odd game when things went a bit extreme in their favour I don’t see much evidence that Manchester City got the title on a PGMOL-silver plate.  Of course there have been a few games when they got the rub of the green but not really on a systematic basis. The negative bias numbers clearly show that.

I noticed a few times the ref was not brave enough to send a Manchester City player off when it really had to be done.  That is throwing a bit of a referee shadow over the results.

]]> http://www.sportskeeda.com/2012/08/03/epl-ref-review-2012-manchester-city-they-didnt-win-the-league-with-referee-assistance/feed/ 1 112813 http://www.sportskeeda.com/2012/08/03/epl-ref-review-2012-manchester-united-a-home-advantage-3-times-the-league-average/ http://www.sportskeeda.com/2012/08/03/epl-ref-review-2012-manchester-united-a-home-advantage-3-times-the-league-average/#comments Thu, 02 Aug 2012 18:45:55 +0000 UntoldArsenal http://blog.emiratesstadium.info/?p=23002 For 2 minutes it looked as if United won the league. Then QPR collapsed and City scored 2 late goals and the title was lost.

A season of highs but also a few lows for Manchester United ended on a low note. The only thing that is left now is to find out how the refs were in the games that had Manchester United on the field.

First thing first: we managed to review 32 games from Manchester United last season. That is 84,21% of the total games in the PL they played. This should give us a good over all picture on how the refs have been in those games.

You can point at the fact that we are missing 6 games. Yes we are. But believe us when we see that we would have loved it if we could have covered them all. But some games were not shown live on TV and so couldn’t be reviewed.

And then there is the little fact that we were in need for a few extra referees to review the games. It doesn’t matter who you support to be a ref reviewer. As long as we know who you support you will be fine.

The most important thing for a ref reviewer is that you should support the laws of the games. That you are a qualified ref who only wants one thing: that the refs apply the laws in every game in the same way.

So if you think this can improve and you find yourself in this little description: just make yourself know to us and join us.

But for last season you have to accept what we have done for now and if you don’t like it: don’t moan, don’t complain, just join us to make this even better.

Talking about better, let us first have a look at the general level of referees in games that had Manchester United as one of the teams on the field.

A first note if you are new on this site: this is the score from the refs on the field. This has not really something to do with Manchester United or their opponents. They just happened to be on the field when we looked at the refs.

And what do we see in our first set of numbers? Well the refs in general were slightly better than the league average of 72.49% correct decisions. But only by a margin of 0.31%. So not really a big difference between the league average and the games that had Manchester United on the field.

Now you might say that well this isn’t too bad. But let me point at the fact that this score means that the refs were not able to even avoid making 1 mistake in every 4 decisions. If a ref had to make 10 decisions 3 were wrong. This is an absolute minimum in my opinion.

If we look at the weighted decisions we see that the league average is 71,35% and the score of the games with Manchester United in it is 72.58%. So that is more than 1% better than the league average. This has nothing to do with decisions going in favour or against a team. This is the score from the ref.

Again I think both scores (the league average and this score) is too low for a league like the PL. The best league in the world but refs make 3 mistakes in every 10 decisions doesn’t look like a good score to me.

The next step is seeing how the score of the different type of decisions were. And if you are new I just will tell you that the difference between weighted and un-weighted can be found in these different type of decisions. Other and offside decisions have a weight of 1. Yellow cards have a weight of 2. And goals, penalty and red cards decisions have a weight of 3.   In the un-weighted version of numbers we gave every decision a weight of 1. In the weighted decisions we put the weight as explained on to the decisions.

If we look at the goal decisions we see that the league average on goal decisions was 91.753%. The score in Manchester United games was 93.860% correct decisions. So this is a better score. But we have to keep in mind that this is the most important type of decisions as it determines who gets the points after the 90 minutes. So this type of decision should have a score of around 99% correct. We will not settle for less. So despite this being a better score than the league average I still don’t think it is good enough.

Talking about a score of 99%. Mike Riley (chief of the referees) claimed that 99% of the offside decisions were correct. From the decisions we could check we only come to a score of 88.89%. And when we couldn’t check the decisions we marked them as correct. As we always do in case of doubt we give the ref the benefit of the doubt.  So the offside decisions are not only worse than the league average but also far, far away from the claims from Mike Riley.

For the other decisions (all the fouls in the middle of the field) we have found an average league score of 71.96% correct decisions.  The score in the Manchester United games is slightly better with 72.62%. But remember 3 mistakes in every 10 decisions is what we are talking about.

The penalty decisions. In the Manchester United games we found that 64.71 % of the penalty decisions were correct. That is some 2,5% better than the league average. Before you feel good about that number let me tell you that this means that from every 10 penalty decisions a ref had to make 4 were wrong. For such an important decision type this is totally unacceptable.

If we take a look at the red cards decisions we see that the league average was only 21% correct cards. In the Manchester United games we have found a score of around 36%. So much better than the league average but well it couldn’t become any worse could it?

The league average for correct yellow cards decisions was 56.28%. In the Manchester United games we only had 53.17%. So not that good. In fact this almost comes down to a score where the ref throws a coin in the air and makes up his decision on the outcome of that to give a yellow card or not.

So in general some good scored for the refs, some bad score for the refs.

But now we will forget the correct decisions and we are going to have a look at the incorrect decisions. Because those are the decisions that (can) make the difference in a game. After all making the correct decisions is what he is being paid for. Making mistakes is something that has to be avoided as much as possible.

So from now on we move in to the red zone (how appropriate) of the scores from the refs and we will be seeing who benefited from the wrong decisions in the games that had Manchester United in it.

First let us start with the words from Mike Riley (PGMOL – head of the refs) who said last season: there is no bias from refs in the PL. From our overall numbers we have proven that there is at least one bias: the home and away bias.

And our un-weighted numbers have shown that when you play away from home in the PL you will have to overcome a negative away bias of -1.826 points. After covering 15 away games from Manchester United we have found that they didn’t have to face a negative away bias but in general had a positive bias in their favour of 1.000 bias points.

What goes up, must come down of course and when you play at home you can expect a positive home bias in your favour of +1.826 bias points. In the 17 home games we did from Manchester United we found a positive bias score of +5.647 bias points. That is almost 3 times the normal positive home bias that any other team can expect.

The final result leaves us with a positive bias swing of +3.469 bias points in favour of Manchester United.

If we look at the weighted numbers we have found that in general a team that goes away from home in the PL will have to overcome a negative away bias of -2.619 bias points.

In the games we covered from Manchester United they didn’t have a negative away bias against them but a positive away bias of +1.333. Now this might not sound too spectacular but if you compare this to the overall league average you can see that this is a complete reverse situation.

If we look at the home games we can expect Manchester United (just like any other average team) to have a home advantage bias of +2.619 bias points. In the home games at Old Trafford we have found a positive bias of 7.647 in their favour. Again that is almost 3 times the league average.

The final result is a positive bias score of +4.687 in favour of Manchester United.

And before you now go to the comment section and start writing some abuse: this is only the 4th highest total positive bias we found in total in the league. But more about that later when we unveil the league tables with the position of each team in each decisions and bias table.

Now let us take a look and see which refs are very Manchester United friendly and who are not that friendly.

We had 15 different refs in the games we covered Manchester United. 4 refs had a negative bias against Manchester United last season.  The ref that stands out is Peter Walton. He did one game and was very negative for Manchester United. But he will no longer trouble them as he somehow got shifted to the USA.

Another negative ref was Anthony Taylor who only did one game and had a high negative score. Not in the major decisions but still many wrong decisions against Manchester United.  The negative bias from Martin Atkinson and Andre Marriner is rather small.

The 11 positive refs for United. This may come to a surprise to non-Manchester United supporters but Howard Webb was not the ref with the highest pro-United bias score. No, in the un-weighted decisions he has the lowest bias swing of all refs. I’m not going to name all 11 refs of course but Chris Foy and Mike Dean had the highest un-weighted bias in favour of Manchester United last season. Lots of high scores from lots of refs in fact.

Let us see what happens if we put weight on the decisions.

The same 15 refs of course and the same 4 negative refs. Peter Walton his negative score has even gone up or should I say down to unacceptable negativity. The same can be said of Anthony Taylor who doesn’t seem to be a good friend of Manchester United at all. The negative score from Atkinson is not that big and I think Andre Marriner who did 4 games tried to be the most unbiased refs of the 15 we reviewed.

On the positive side we still see that Howard Webb was not completely making his name as a United liking ref. Despite all the jokes that are being said about him he sure was not their best player during the games he did. The big decisions mostly going to United but in the middle of the field he messed up almost equally for both teams.

The scores of the positive refs are all rather high. All above 6 bias points. So that is a lot to overcome for any team. Chris Foy leading the pack in front of Mark Clattenburg in this graphic. I must say that I am really surprised by the position of Clattenburg in this table as in general he has been a middle of the table man for most teams. Did he have a bad day at the office in the only United game he did?

Mike Dean in third place shows that he knows what he has to do to stay at the top. A bit cryptic maybe. Regular readers will understand, if you are new: food for thought.

Let us now see at the league table and the bias score put together

United started well in the season and you see that until game 5 the ref bias was in their favour. The first swing can be seen in week 6. United dropped points in that game when the ref showed a big negative bias against them.  Week 8 we see the same. A negative bias and dropping points again. Those are two games that stand out of the refs because it is clearly visible that the ref in those games didn’t give them anything at all. So even Manchester United drops points when the refs are giving them the wrong decisions. Who said it doesn’t matter and you have to be stronger and better and should overcome such things? In these numbers you can clearly see that it does matter a lot that when the ref is “against” you in his decisions it is very hard to win games.

Of course the flip side of this is that when you have the ref on ‘your side’ it gets easier to win  games. So one could ask himself: how many of those points in games with a very big bias in favour of United were won thanks to that bias from the refs? Because if you accept the first paragraph in which I say that United clearly lost points because the ref making a mess, then you have to consider the second option also.

Another good example can be seen in game 13. Lots of decisions going for United but a few major mistakes by the refs against United on big decisions. And again we see United dropping points.

If the bars are as big above and below the zero line it just shows that the ref in general had a bad game. But when one bar is much longer than the other side it means the refs had a biased game.

Do you still believe that refs have no influence on the outcome of the games. Be it a positive or negative one?

FINAL CONCLUSION

There is no denying the fact that Manchester United had a clearly positive bias from the refs in general. If you want to deny it be my guest and go through all the 32 games and point at where we are wrong in our numbers. It is in the open and you can check each decision.

In fact those few games when the ref made mistakes that went against United they dropped points. And maybe that is the best indication of them all that shows how important the refs can be.

Manchester United dropped points because of bad referee decisions going against them. But it won far more points when the referee decisions went in their favour.

We have three clubs to go: Manchester City, Manchester United, and Arsenal.

So as we are almost there the question is: what have we found so far? What should we be looking out for in these final few reviews?

First off, through our reports on refereeing performances in 40% of matches in the Premier League last season, each conducted by a qualified ref, we have confirmed in game after game, match after match, that the quality and standard of refereeing is awful.  Way, way below that claimed by the PGMOL which runs the refereeing in the Premier League.

Second, we have found incredible variance between the performance of referees in relation to certain teams.  Basically for some clubs one can clearly say, “if you have got Ref X, you are likely to be stuffed”.

But, and this is the big “but”, this doesn’t happen all the time.  To put it crudely, you can have situations in which clubs are getting huge bias factors against them, and then suddenly everything evens up.  This is not the same as the old BBC adage that “it all events out in the end” (a mantra repeatedly endlessly without the slightest bit of evidence), but rather it is to say that the bias against certain clubs switches on and off.  Indeed, it seems, it switches on and off at key moments. If Newcastle are getting close to a top four position you might find some odd ref decisions against them.  If Chelsea have slipped down the league and are not going to make the top four, you might find any bias against them vanishing.

Third, it is clear that although a referee can be biased for or against a team (in term of his decisions), that is not always enough to swing a match.  You can’t see bias from results alone – if you want to look for oddities you have to analyse the individual decisions and sum them up.

Thus what we have not proven as yet is:

a) which club or clubs are benefiting from dubious ref decisions

b) the cause of these dubious referee decisions

c) whether this enormous survey encompassing over 40% of the league games in the Premier League last season was itself reasonable and fair.

On point a) I am going to leave you hanging on for a little longer.  Two more reports will be published later today (2 August 2012) and one tomorrow and you will then be able to make a judgement.  Just chill out, relax, have your lunch (if you are on UK time), and then all will be revealed.

But for the moment I am moving on to points b) and c)

The cause of these dubious referee decisions

i) Referees can make bad decisions because they are having a really bad day on the pitch (and every one of us who is in work knows what that is like, no matter what job we have).   Refs are human, and they will just have days when it all goes wrong.  It happens.

ii) Referees can simply not be as good as we (and PGMOL) would like them to be. On this point, we are at one with Alan Green, the BBC radio commentator on football matches.  For years he has been criticising referees, although he has never looked consistently enough at the issue to draw any statistical conclusion (or at least he hasn’t done this on air).  The implication of his commentaries is that the referees in the top league are not very good.  He is very careful never to ask why.

iii) Referees can be influenced in ways that they should not be influenced

This third point only comes into play if we show that the dubious decisions made by referees are so far away from being random that they can’t have happened by chance.  Put another way, if everything is down to having a bad day or simply not being very good, then everything should even up in the end.  If it doesn’t we have to look for a more sinister explanation.

When we first started this whole idea of reviewing referees rather than matches we had several people writing in saying, “you have proved nothing.  Unless you have a recording a chairman A saying to ref B, ‘here are the keys to the villa in Tuscany – use it whenever you wish’ then we have nothing.”

I have always disagreed with this.  I come from a social science background, and in the psychology experiments I was involved in, and all those that I read which came from the eminent researchers across the world the issue was always that if one could show that there was less than a one in twenty chance of the result being due to random factors, then you could say that yes, it has been proved.

In football referee errors should be at a consistent level, varying at random because of the “bad day” factor.  Beyond that, we have a problem.

iv) Or maybe it is PGMOL

The organisation that runs the professional referees in the Premier League (PGMOL) has refused to engage in discussion with us – as have the referee organisations across Europe.  Indeed during the course of our investigation the PGMOL have moved from having a web site with information about refereeing, open to everyone to see, to a web site that you can only enter with a password supplied by PGMOL.   Did this happen because of us?  Who knows – maybe it was just a coincidence.

But let’s assume for a moment that the findings we have are real (and given that we are using a range of referees to do our analysis, and their work is then checked and is open for all to see that seems more than likely), if the explanation of the bizarre and eccentric variances in referee performances through the year is NOT that a referee has been bought, then what is it?

This is where PGMOL really should be coming out with some sensible commentaries.  But apart from claiming a phenomenally high accuracy level in referee decisions, with the claim being backed up by no statistical evidence at all, they say nothing.  “Everything is fine, don’t worry” is their patronising view it seems.

Yet, PGMOL are running their organisation oddly.  There are far fewer refs than we might expect.  There is a geographical bias to the referees.  Some referees are given the same team to ref over and over again.   In short: if PGMOL wanted to show that everything in the refereeing world was fine, it could at least address these points.  But it does not, and it makes no response to ourselves.

iv) But maybe it is all a figment of our imagination.   Maybe our referees are the ones who can’t see if the ball is over the line, if a penalty is a penalty, and if a foul is a foul.  Maybe it is us.  The only way to find out is to look for some other organisation that assesses referees.  Not PGMOL because although they say everything is rosy and they give us no evidence.  What we want is to find another totally independent body, and see what they say.

And guess what, we’ve found one.  Details will follow shortly.

During this series of articles we’ve had a lot of correspondence.  Many have thanked and supported us – not just Arsenal supporters but fans of other clubs.  We’re grateful.

Of course many have written and called us every name under the sun.   “Typical whining Arsenal fans”, summarises a lot of the complaints.  Some have suggested that we are picking specific matches to prove our point (although amusingly most of the time when they say, “I bet you didn’t look at ” – we find did, it is on this site, and our analysis agrees with them).

We’ve had a lot of “get a life” comments and the like – you can imagine the sort of thing.  But the interesting thing is that apart from the question of the issue of cause and effect (ie is it incompetence or deliberate bias), no one has put forward a coherent argument against our methods and approaches.  People call us names, but no one says, “here’s the flaw in your argument”, other than demanding a level of proof far beyond that demanded for most other investigations.

This site clearly proclaims it is a football site from an Arsenal perspective.  We are Arsenal fans, and when it comes to the matches we go to, we are as tribal and committed as any Tottenham, Chelsea, Wigan, Man U, Blackburn or any other fan.  But we are also informed and educated enough to be able to engage with supporters of other clubs on matters of importance.  Increasingly this year we’ve had really good debates with fans of other teams on issues that concern us all, not least because we clearly proclaim who we are.

And this is my main concluding point.  If our final club reviews do show that there is a problem with referees in the Premier League, then there is no doubt that the overwhelming majority of clubs in the league are suffering because of that.  If there is something wrong with referees in the Premier League, it is not just one club that is being done down.  It is most of them.

For that reason, supporters of the majority of teams who are suffering in this way really should be coming together.  If this is the case, we are all being screwed.

Most of all we’d like to see lots of supporter groups from other clubs coming together to do what we have done – although believe me it is a huge job.   But until that moment occurs, I would thank all those fans of other teams who have appreciated our work.

What is being achieved by our referee reviewers is a revolution and its ramifications will echo through football in England for a long time to come.  Of course, PGMOL and their allies will ignore us. But the sensational rise in readership of this site during the last year means that as the story pops out of the box, no one is going to be able to put it back in.

I wrote an article yesterday on The transfer market at the edge of collapse.  I want to continue the theme with an example from a completely different world – the IT industry.  But please stay with me even if IT bores you stupid – there’s a footballing point to this.

So, just for a moment, the lesson that we can learn from IT…

For companies like Microsoft and Apple, making things and selling them is never enough. They like to go further with pre-ordering and pre-announcements. The aim is  simple: they build up enough of an excitement so that when the product is released everyone buys it.   Windows 95, i-pad, i-phones… all perfect examples. Sell it before you’ve built it.

But IT companies, like MPs with their expenses and like their chums the Bankers, always get carried away. They come up with a clever idea, and then just can’t stop getting carried away.

Thus it was that in one famous legal case Stanley Sporkin, a US judge within the District of  Columbia (who interestingly was general counsel to the CIA for a while, so he knows a thing or two about subversion), gave the legal opinion that Microsoft had  pre-announced software deliberately to disrupt their competitors. He called Microsoft’s approach “a practice that is deceitful on its face and everybody in the business community knows it.” He called the non-existent products they announced, “Vapourware”.

But even s0 eminent a judge saying this didn’t stop the idea of pre-announcements and Apple soon became the market leader in leading the market to products that didn’t exist.

All this is well-known and well publicised. But what is generally ignored is that football has its own Vapourware. It is the “rumour” (deliberately leaked) of a  suggestion that a player  might join a big club, when there is absolutely no possibility that he will join the club. A “Vapour-transfer” in fact. (That’s my invented name – I quite like it).  (c) Tony.

Now the Vapour Transfer can be used in all sorts of ways, and I will try and explain just three Vapour Transfers here. And my point is: once you see the way in which Vapour Transfers work, suddenly the whole of the international transfer market becomes clear.

Vapour Transfer 1: The Distraction

For this example, we’ll take the imaginary player Uglješa Kovačević, happily playing for the imaginary FK Frontosa Topola in the Serbian Vojvodina League East. If the word is out that Arsenal have found him and are looking to buy him, then that might be the truth of the matter. And indeed, in this type of Vapour Transfer, it is vital that the original story is at least believable.

(You can always tell the real Distraction Vapour Transfer from the mindless ramblings of a drunken journalist because at heart the Vapour Transfer might just be real. Thus, we all knew that the 26 June 2008  story by the Daily Mirror under the headline “Arsenal line up shock move for Peter Crouch” was gibberish because Crouch had none of the qualities that Wenger looks for in players. Thus, this was not a Vapour Transfer in any regard but a newspaper filling a blank page.)

If the Uglješa Kovačević story is a Vapour Transfer of the Distraction type, it will be put out to the press to put Arsenal’s rivals off the true story which is (again using imaginary names) that Arsenal are getting very interested in Dragan Bošković from FCKA Budućnosta in Montenegro.

If it works, no one else realises during the secret negotiations that Mr Wenger sees something in young Dragan that no one else sees, so no rivals step in, the price remains reasonable and the deal is done and no football clubs are harmed in the process – unless someone is silly enough to go and buy Uglješa Kovačević merely on the basis that a rumour circulates that Arsenal were watching him.

Vapour Transfer 2: The Deception

But supposing Real Manchester (an imaginary club) did all this hype about Uglješa Kovačević, when in fact there was no deal at all going on anywhere. And supposing they didn’t just let it slip that one of their vast array of scouts is out there looking, but instead suggested that this young player is so good that their chief scout was “ordered” to “drop everything” and damn well get out to Serbia and start negotiating.

That would be a much more sinister matter for it takes the minor misinformation which any club worth its salt will tumble and do nothing about, up to the level of selling a player whose qualities don’t exist. It’s a con simply to use up the Real Manchester scouting resources. Do it enough times and they won’t have a scout left trailing a real talent. False trails are everywhere. It is “a practice that is deceitful on its face and everybody in the football community knows it.”

Vapour Transfer 3: The Destructive Expectation

And now, consider Robin van Nasri or Samir Persiei. Supposing the story goes around that Juventus or Man City or Chelsea want one of these players, even if that story is not true.

This of course is exactly the story that the media like. They don’t have to do any work, because the story is fed to them. No journalists of expensive trips to Serbia hunting down the player or the team. Nothing.

But here’s the tip – you can always tell one of these tales because the papers have a code that they use to announce such a story. And that code is… yes, you know, “Alert”. “Man City have been put on alert following the training ground fall out between Southampton boss Nigel Adkins and the Saints young super star Uglješa Kovačević – who has only one year left on his contract.”

The story breaks, and the player thinks about all the money he could make with a move. His head is turned so he says, “I’m not signing a new contract.” Remember, at this stage, Juve or Man C don’t actually want the player and have no thought of the player – but now the whole story is running. The point is not to turn the club, but to turn the head of a young player who has potential.

Now also the Man City fans and Juve fans are excited by the press story (which remember has no truth) and so are expecting the signing. And Southampton, who have done nothing wrong, suddenly find that a player in whom they have invested a fortune, is planning to leave when there was every expectation that he would stay.

So who benefits from this? Several clubs actually. Firstly, if we have the expectation that Southampton will do moderately well this season, then any club that is expecting to have a hard time of it is interested in disrupting  Southampton, as they might then be dragged down into the relegation positions.

Secondly, the manager of a big club that is supposed to be signing top players has a problem. OK if he refuses to be drawn in, and the club win trophies, no one notices. But if he refuses to deal and his club don’t win as much as expected, it will look bad – no matter what happens to the youngster. He will not only be criticised for not winning stuff, he’ll also be criticised for not signing this young man when he was there for the taking. If the manager signs the youngster however he could well find that the youngster is nowhere near as good as he thought – and so he has wasted money – which in the FFP days might not be so clever.

As for Southampton, if they lose the player, their fans become dispirited, they are seen as being an early selling club, and they lose out on what could have been a big transfer fee in a few years time.

To say that the cases of RVP and Nasri and Cesc were all cases of Destructive Expectation is too simple, because there is still more to this messy business. If there is a continuing interest in the theme on Untold, I’ll come back with some more examples of Vapour Transfers, and the way in which clubs are now starting to double-bluff on the Vapour Transfer technique, shortly.