Greetings Positives,
Despite repeated claims to the contrary, it is remarkable how football reflects real life. This may be shocking to those who see football as some form of escape from the every-day challenges of our human existence; stuff like work, home, family, politics, economics, you name it. The harsh reality, however, is professional football has become big business and like all big business it is institutionalized with various stakeholders fighting tooth and nail for their respective self-interests.
As in the broader society there are various ideological points of view; in football there is a desperate need to avoid anything political so we are left with the highfalutin concept of “football-philosophy”. Most of this so-called philosophy is deceptive, at least when it comes to the Premier League. Making money is the primary goal and the standard of football is secondary. In contrast to the PL, the German Bundesliga has a mandate to improve domestic football. So while commercially inferior to the PL, it produces more world class footballers and arguably the world’s best national football team.
Fact is the Premier League is driven by the need to maintain its commercial domination of the international tv market which is a multi-billion pound source of revenue. They care very little about improving the standard of domestic English football or even the standard of refereeing for that matter. I will get to the latter in a moment. The dominant narrative in the PL is money; super-transfer fees, super-salaries; super-managers, super-agents, super-owners, super-stadiums, you name it.
With the fantastic amounts of money going in and out of PL clubs, it is certainly a tempting attraction for international money launderers acting on behalf of the various oligarchs, despots and carpetbaggers who automatically enjoy the protection of the Her Majesty’s government once they become an owner of a premier league club. In the world of international finance London is one of the major money centers and the PL is a significant player. No wonder it is so important to protect the PL narrative and to punish those who may upset the apple cart. I am absolutely positive this reality is not lost on Arsene Wenger and Arsenal Football Club.
To convince the masses worldwide, that they have the best show in town, the PL has the mainstream media, both home and abroad, in their pocket. There is clearly an unwritten rule in both the English and American media; never broadcast or print anything that shows the dirty underbelly of the league. It is a known fact that those media, with rights to broadcast PL football, have a contractual obligation to not broadcast anything that brings the league in disrepute, no matter how true or factual. From the many reports online and the little I have seen of BBC’s flagship football program, Match-Of-The Day, they conceal and and edit most of the egregious refereeing decisions. As in Orwell’s “1984”, news reports are consistently rewritten and edited to sanitize the product; controversies conveniently disappear down the “memory hole”. In the words of that great Nobel Laureate and English playwright, the late Harold Pinter, describing the manipulation of public discourse by the mainstream media:
It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest.
This to me is symptomatic of what is currently happening with respect to the diabolical standards of refereeing in the premier league. Again readers must be reminded that the refereeing organization, the PGMOL, is a body bought and paid–for by the PL. It is currently headed by Mike Riley, who was the official-in-charge of the greatest match-fix any of us have ever witnessed in modern PL history in October 2004, i.e. Arsenal’s Game-50 versus Manchester United. In front of a worldwide audience, with the almost absolute complicity of the broadcasters and the football establishment, Riley did everything to enure a victory for United. According to Wikipedia:
The match saw a series of unprofessional fouls that were overlooked by referee Mike Riley, such as Rio Ferdinand on Fredrik Ljungberg in the 19th minute and striker Ruud van Nistelrooy’s studs-up challenge on Ashley Cole. Arsenal dictated much of the early play and created several openings, but as the game progressed Manchester United threatened. The home team were awarded a controversial penalty in the 73rd minute, as Wayne Rooney allegedly tumbled over Sol Campbell’s outstretched leg. Van Nistelrooy converted the penalty kick and late in the game Rooney scored for 2–0. The result ended Arsenal’s record-breaking 49-match unbeaten run. Many Arsenal fans were disgruntled, as they believed Rooney had dived and the penalty should not have been given.
[As always the above report fails to mention Riley’s “carte blanche” to the Neville brothers to kick Arsenal’s then in-form striker, Jose Antonio Reyes, out of the game without fear of penalization.]
Is it any wonder that the one top club in England that refuses to join the premier league merry-go-round; not over-spending, not paying the highest transfer fees, not paying the highest salaries, not firing managers at will, not engaging super-agents, is not the preferred club by Riley and the PGMOL and by default, not preferred by the PL. This is despite the fact this club has long played the most, modern progressive football which the media now suddenly discovers to be worth fawning over Pep Guardiola and Manchester City. This is despite being the first PL club to build a brand new modern stadium out of its own pocket and still retain its top-4 status for 20 years. Not preferred, despite developing an academy which constantly produces top English talent who regularly represent the club as well as appear in English national colors. Etc, etc, etc.
Arsenal Is #1 In The Top-6 Table
Is it any wonder the PGMOL referees, reflecting the outlook of their paymasters, the Premier League, have made Arsenal, over the past 10-years, the most penalized club in the top-six League in terms of Penalties-Against. As always, the unbiased data tells the truth despite the attempts of many to bluntly reject any information that does not fit the narrative, peddled by the mainstream media, of a poor beleaguered PGMOL desperately trying to do a fair and unbiased job among a mass of cheating players. Apparently the recent video of referee Moss and his assistant making a penalty decision in favor of Tottenham despite being uncertain of a prior offside and the fact the ref is heard to ask something along the lines of “what do the tv people say”, is for some not convincing enough evidence that the refs have other motivations apart from what happens on the field when they make their decisions.
| Pens Against | Goals Against | PA vs GA | Correlation | |
| Arsenal | 58 | 423 | 14% | 77% |
| Chelsea | 32 | 369 | 9% | 50% |
| Man City | 38 | 443 | 9% | 32% |
| Tottenham | 47 | 499 | 9% | 22% |
| Liverpool | 45 | 428 | 11% | 22% |
| Man Utd | 35 | 358 | 10% | 1% |
Primary stand out from the data:
- Arsenal has the highest correlation by far, i.e. 77%, of Penalties Against vs Goals Against of all the traditional top-6 clubs. In other words, as far as the PGMOL is concerned, in the case of Arsenal, the greater the goals-against the more likelihood of a greater number of penalties.
VS:
- Clubs like Manchester City, Tottenham and Liverpool who have conceded more goals than Arsenal but have a far lower correlation of PAs vs GAs. It is as low as 22% in the case of both Tottenham and Liverpool and no higher than 32% for City. How do the PGMOL and its apologists explain this blatant disparity?
Secondary stand out:
- Manchester United may have 10% of PAs vs GAs but there is almost no relation between the two variables, only a 1% correlation. It leads me to the conclusion United must be the greatest defensive team on earth despite the likes of Rojo, Vidic and Smalling who routinely foul their opponents in the box.
As I have often emphasized in the past, like the mainstream media, almost none of the big accounts in the Arsenal blogsphere, on twitter and on podcasts want to engage the PGMOL and the PL in these glaring statistical disparities. They are either intimidated or corrupted by the mainstream media (from whom many hope to one day get a gig) that truth-seeking is forbidden, a clear example of self-censorship. Meanwhile the club they claim to love and support is being screwed over year-in, year out. First it was the Riley fix, then the kicking and physical intimidation of Arsenal players that lead to Ramsey and Diaby being literally broken in two and Diaby’s ankle destroyed, rotational fouling, the penalty embargo after spurious allegations that Eduard dived and this year a rash of phantom penalties-against.
(PS: In 2017 I did a major study covering 20 years of PL data showing that the PGMOL was able to significantly victimize Arsenal with Penalties-Against; a 120% growth which far exceeded any of the traditional top six clubs many of whom had an inferior average league position.)
Already I have warned that the arrival of Aubameyang will result in the offside flag being used to sabotage his runs off the shoulder of the last defender. Based on the history of biased PGMOL officiating when it comes to Arsenal, the odds of my prediction coming true is as certain as night follows day.
Rather than a campaign against PGMOL bias and for a robust, transparent Video Assistant Ref (VAR) outside of secretive PGMOL control, many it seems default to the typical PL solution; have the current boss fired and employ a super-manager who sees football as a defensive war of attrition. Only a coward who has been corrupted by the money and the resulting negative football on show most weeks would welcome such a fate for Arsenal Football Club.
To all my fellow positives and especially my English friends, the words of Pinter is inspirational:
Truth in drama is forever elusive. You never quite find it but the search for it is compulsive. The search is clearly what drives the endeavour. The search is your task. More often than not you stumble upon the truth in the dark, colliding with it or just glimpsing an image or a shape which seems to correspond to the truth, often without realising that you have done so. But the real truth is that there never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art. There are many. These truths challenge each other, recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are blind to each other. Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost.
Extracting truth from the unbiased data and its dissemination to our fellow gooners and the football public at large is our duty.
Positively Arsenal 
Well you have obviously never been to untold arsenal. On untold arsenal they have continually brought this up and even do ref analysis of matches.
Now as I comment on the above website I willhere your data does not show bias against arsenal and I am a die hard gooner. Remember at the moment referees get seconds from one angle to reflect on an incident and make a decision and as human beings we all make errors. However, what the pgmol is guilty of is not having enough top quality officials to be able to get rid of incompetent referees such as Taylor moss and a few others too.
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Marvelous Shotta. Follow the money.
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A comment from a stranger who goes by the handle: “thegreatwrighthopeofgoonerland”:
Well you have obviously never been to untold arsenal. On untold arsenal they have continually brought this up and even do ref analysis of matches.
Now as I comment on the above website I willhere your data does not show bias against arsenal and I am a die hard gooner. Remember at the moment referees get seconds from one angle to reflect on an incident and make a decision and as human beings we all make errors. However, what the pgmol is guilty of is not having enough top quality officials to be able to get rid of incompetent referees such as Taylor moss and a few others too.
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Lovely stuff again Shotta. I particularly liked the quote about the many truths as so many people don’t seem to understand this simple concept.
About the football and the, let’s face it, cheating that goes on, I think you will likely not make a difference to anyone’s opinions over this. I am already convinced by the evidence over the years, while many will refuse to be convinced and will question the strength of the evidence, while offering none themselves. Strangely enough, both the quest for truth and the anger at injustice on the one hand, and the absolute refusal to consider there being any wrongdoing on the other, likely stem from the same desire to view sport as something special.
But I would like to note just how special this makes Arsenal as a club and Arsene Wenger as a person to not give in to such bullying. To refuse to be turned by better offers from other clubs, nor by threats and punishments. I don’t know how he does it beyond the fact that he loves football and loves what this club stands for. If it weren’t for that, I myself may have already stopped watching football altogether because the at times blatant cheating, and the refusal of anyone to even consider it, let alone do anything about it, really upsets me.
Still, slow progress is better than no progress and there has been some progress in this area, both in the discourse, and in the introduction of VAR. I’m more cynical than optimistic about the chances of getting a clean game though.
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To: greatwrighthopeofgoonerland
Obviously, despite the repeated and consistent evidence from the data, you refuse to acknowledge that the bias shown by the PGMOL is systemic. You resort to the old excuse trotted out by the mainstream media that it is the lack of top quality referees, etc. If that is the problem, how come the PGMOL not embrace the use of a robust, transparent Video Assistant Ref, i.e. use technology, as Wenger has long advocated, to improve their decision-making. The Bundesliga has already adopted VAR to make their officiating the best ever in the world. Just imagine, the German’s trying to be the best at football, as they are best at making cars, etc. Instead we are treated to an insidious media campaign to denigrate VAR by the usual suspects in the media who cover-up the systemic diving and cheating in the PL by the the likes of Dele Alli on the grounds they are concerned by the drama of the game. My god. I couldn’t make this up even if I tried.
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I have said it many times, never mind buying more and more players, Arsenal need to buy a few refs.
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“thegreatwrighthopeofgoonerland”: Well played. read an article and ignore the 14 years of evidence and conclude we are just unlucky.
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We may have turned a corner this season Shotts – our 36 PL goals conceded and just 4 penalties !
Slight rick on your chart though I suspect it is just the charting tool. We conceded just one PL penalty in 15/16, and were awarded 2. We let in 36 goals. In the preceding season of 14/15 we let in the same 36 goals but with 3 penalties conceded, though 7 awarded.
Why do you think the referees (under he direction of Mike Riley) decided to stop their penalty campaign campaign in 15/16 – And why did we let in the same number of goals ?
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shotta isn’t it odd that these people see it as just human error from the refs that see the awful stats from the PGMOL guys in Arsenal games, if it was merely down to Refs not being good enough, then why is it that its mostly in Arsenal games they are not good enough, are we getting different refs than the rest, or is it as many of us claim, its how these Refs, to use a PGMOL term, “game manage”.
the PGMOL don’t say their refs enforce the rules, oh no, they “game manage”, we even have Refs admit that when they do European games or International games they have to change how they ref, yet never has any pundit, journo or many blogs asked why, after all the game of football has only one rule book,
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Hi Shotta..
I am a regular reader of this blog although I rarely comment here. Can you please confirm if the correlation data is between the goals against and penalty against for each year.
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Andy, don’t forget we got away with one from Mustafi this very season. That’s proof positive that the overall trend is misleading?
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anicoll
That question is argumentative rather than inquisitive.
Can I just flip this around?
Would a sample of data that size, not randomly chosen at that, be enough evidence for you to attack the hypothesis that the league exhibits no wrongdoing? Even when that is unsupported by any real data, I bet you’d demand a larger data sample. So why is it ok to pick at that point of data and use it to attack what the rest of the data shows as a trend?
I’m very wary of this ‘why’ that people demand as proof. Have you heard of the continental drift theory? It was proposed by a climatologist called Alfred Wegener based on certain evidences (the location of coal and oil, the similarity in rock structures and fossil samples across continents etc) that the continents actually moved with time.
He was widely ridiculed by the geologists (the experts) and asked to explain how this would happen. When he proposed a mechanism, this incorrect mechanism was used to discredit his entire idea and the evidence it was based on. As it turns out plate tectonics vindicates Wegener and explains the mechanism.
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Shard I would not “demand a larger data sample” believe me.
I am not interested in data. Data “proves” nothing because by its nature it is selected from an infinity of possible combinations and therefore open to manipulation. The same data can be identified as “proving” two opposite propositions, for example the number of penalties in a season awarded against us has no obvious link to the goals conceded (see above).
We ie Arsenal football club usually let in more goals than the other top six (+ Leicester), we score fewer goals than the other top six. If we scored more goals and let in fewer we’d do better and may even win the PL like we used to.
Argumentative ? Not really. I am appreciative of Shotta’s work even if I don’t agree with it.
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But what do you agree with Andy because this is just weird.
Data is not evidence, and anecdotes are not evidence. So there is no evidence. All that matters is the result. So for instance, it matters not whether the goals scored are down to a player’s brilliance, or a keeper’s mistake, or a ref’s interference, or a beach ball thrown on the field. The way to win is to concede less and score more, and the way to score more goals is to score more goals.
I wonder why diving bothers you though. Surely a foul is a foul if it is called as such. Any other outlook is biased and hence flawed as evidence. Why even have the rules defined, even as loosely as they are, since whatever happened is what happened and needs no further analysis, comparison, explanation, or recourse.
A neat, if somewhat bizarre, view of the game Andy.
PS. Data ‘proves’ nothing. Absolutely agree with that. But it definitely can suggest and inform. If you outright reject all data because it ‘proves’ nothing and is open to bias, you aren’t arguing for a fairer, unbiased world, just a world more blissful in its ignorance and even more hardwired to their own biases.
PPS. Even a goal scored is ‘data’. Maybe we should stop keeping score, remove the ‘goal’ and just admire the skill. That is what those freestylers do. I’d rather not watch that though.
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No No – there is lots and lots of evidence, almost limitless in fact, in the sense of individual pieces of the kaleidoscope that makes up the world around us ( or perhaps me but that is a different issue).
The point I am making is that from that infinity of evidence one is free to pick and choose, and that is what we have to do, and come to conclusions that fit with our view of the kaleidoscope.
In this specific instance Shotts has scrutinised the penalties awarded v goals conceded and says two things – first, the evidence indicates a clear bias on the part of referees who award those penalties and second, the award of those penalties is a ( or the reason) reason whereby AFC have not achieved higher position in the PL.
I do not see either proposition is supported by that evidence he relies on, correlation not being causation.
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But Andy, if we got more penalties for and less against, wouldn’t that fit your model for success in scoring more and conceding less?
At very least it would make inroads.
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As far as I remember Shotta has shown that Arsenal get far fewer penalties than our rivals, or even teams further down. And that we get more penalties given against us than our top 4 rivals (absolute as well as as % of goals conceded). This is just factual data.
You are correct in that it doesn’t necessarily show a ref bias. That is but ONE possible explanation. If that is the only point of contention, then there is no contention at all. But the reason shotta and I give it so much weight is because to us it seems like a very logical and likely explanation. To counteract this needs another even more likely and logical explanation, or at least a counteracting theory that has the weight of evidence behind it. (And when I say Logic, I mean it in the lingual sense rather than the philosophical sense)
The issue is not that you cannot supply this. The issue is that you supplant this only with an appeal to authority. Shotta may not have enough evidence. But gauged against zero evidence it is a lot more convincing.
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A5 at 10:14am
I expected your skepticism given your history of consistently coming to the defense of the integrity of the PGMOL despite evidence to the contrary. What I didn’t expect was the questioning of my data. As you know I value my role as a trusted bearer of the unbiased data and I have had many a rumble with the good and the great on twitter who in the face of the inconvenient truth decide to attack the messenger and not the message.
Let me set the record straight. The Penalties-Against is straight from the premierleague.com website. It has nothing to do with the penalties scored. I didn’t crunch the numbers but it is well known that historically penalties have a 95% probability of being scored. Therefore awarding a penalty has a significant probability of altering the results in a match given that football is such a low scoring game, unlike say basketball where a freethrow is of less significance when 100 points per game or more is the norm. Moreover in football a team can choose its best kicker to take a pen, unlike basketball where the person hacked must take the freethrow. So in basketball teams frequently target the least proficient shooter to have the ball and foul he/she as they try to score.
As for your singling out those years when the pens-against were historically less than average; surely you know that is an unacceptable form of analysis. That is why any study of data needs a large enough data set to observe patterns and draw conclusions. I provided the 11 years of data that is available. As you know, there is an old website, whose name I can’t immediately recall, where I got my 20 years of data for my original study of pens-against. They are now closed. The thing that astonishes me most from doing my data analysis for PA are the many football fans who are quick to draw conclusions after one or two games or even one season but deny the patterns evident over 11 years of data. Go figure.
In conclusion, I am concerned that many of us are suffering from a well known human condition that the psychologists and statisticians describe as “normalcy bias”. We are psychologically conditioned to accept that the status quo as propounded by the Establishment is normal and inviolable. In this case the footballing authorities and the mainstream media have propounded the ideology for decades that English referees are applying the rules fair and square and should never be questioned. We are therefore biased against any data that indicates the contrary. Such data violates our belief systems and values. We used to have the same belief in cricketing circles until the Darrell Hair scandal which led to the implementation of Hawkeye video for all measurable decisions.
As a result there are many who will not only reject the truth that is self-evident from any analysis of the “unbiased” data but will often simply not read my blog as if ignoring the data will change reality. As I recently told an eternal skeptic on twitter; the fact that the clerics and monarchs imprisoned Galileo for heresy only postponed realization by mankind that the earth revolved around the sun.
As always my best regards A5.
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Good read Shotta, thank you and it’s more than a little depressing to still find ourselves here mulling over the same old ‘intrigues’.
I think Andy is ‘guilty’ of an adherence to the motto ‘lies, more lies and damn statistics’ and I have to confess I’m similarly inclined to be wary of the numbers – or at least the ways in which they can be presented. In the case of ‘Shotta’s’ numbers, for me they simply describe much of what we have all seen with our own eyes. I think Andy’s scepticism is based on an admirable desire to defend referees or at least give them the benefit of the doubt. Frankly, it’s not a desire I personally share but that doesn’t necessarily make Andy’s position wrong.
I do feel that the unseen contractual obligations, Shotta refers to, laid on those securing broadcasting rights, is sinister in the extreme and hope that one day these scandalous clauses see the light of day.
I for one am heartily sick of the likes of Linekar and Co insisting black is white and vice versa on Match of the Day. Their insults to our intelligence seems to have no limits and the decline of that programme is but one small tragedy in the greater scheme of the brand protection that appears to have been cast heavily around Premier League football.
That Ali and Kane can routinely dive, routinely win penalty after penalty regardless the weekly scandal that descends upon the online world that is obliged to watch the sickening scenes is nauseating in the extreme. That NOTHING is ever done about it is for me as evidential as any of Shotta’s numbers. That managers defend the cheating and pundits continuously celebrate it as evidence of clever play is NOTHING short of disgusting.
They all – players and pundits alike – simply carry on, seemingly with impunity and an utter disregard for any care of the game they temporarily find themselves the custodians for.
Eventually there will be some kind of reckoning although they’ve done a great job in keeping things going thus far. VAR will no doubt present a challenge for them to control and suppress. Mat Le Tissier’s recent tweet asking if refs are deliberately sabotaging the VAR experiment in this county sent the hairs on my neck reaching for the stratosphere, such a chilling thought.
All I can say is, Arsene’s book had better hold no punches when it eventually sees the light of day but doubtless there will be plenty who will be tasked with belittling, denying and distorting anything he ends up sharing.
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I don’t acknowledge bias against us because there is no irrefutable proof that it exists. Oh no I forgot data is true and can’t be used in ways to show things in one way or another to enhance one persons argument for or against something. What I will say is that a referee may show bias towards or against a side that is Home or away dependent on teams and grounds so was that a foul I’m not sure it’s Home team I’ll give them benefit of doubt. I would like to see ref mics introduced and the referee able to give an after match interview . I think VAR will help a bit but it’s still man in middle that decides whether to go to it or not and everything depends on camera angles too.
If bias exists and is provable then I will gladly accept it but I suspect if you ask every fan in the country they would claim one or more refs are biased against them I have same arguments against my half brother who is a City fan. Standard of refereeing is definitely an issue as is the number as with football teams competition for refereeing matches would improve the standard of refereeing if you weren’t getting gems because standard wasn’t good enough then you would up your standards. I am thoughtful and analytical and I will break down and review things before commenting on anything. I am a gooner and I would love to agree the pgmol and it’s employees are biased towards us. However, to take information at face value and not question it’s validity would be so wrong for me. What we know is that a referee has to make a split second decision on something he has seen from a certain angle and make a call on that information. All I am saying is that we can’t take data given toward an argument as a true reflection of facts the user of data is usually trying to get people to agree with their way of thinking but he is coming at it from an arsenal perspective and I question whether the data was collected and collated subjectively or objectively. I think the author of the post has put out an eloquently written piece that is informative and well planned. However, it’s from a subjective standpoint and thats where I have issues with agreeing whole heartedly with it,
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Thank you for your interesting article.
I would agree that ref bias cannot be the only reason for what seems to be a discrepancy, but it looks like it could be a major reason.
I wonder whether the number of penalties given may be a better gauge for bias than those given against although I accept that a penalty given also means a penalty conceded.
A consistently poor defence might be another, although that might work for a team which is not consistently in the top 4, tor, for example, near the bottom, than one consistently near the top.
Usually, all of our defenders are internationals and highly experienced. To suggest that they are sufficiently unskilled to persistently give away penalties might stretch the imagination.
On the other hand, our attackers spend a good proportion of each game in the opposing penalty area and yet virtually all the tackles against them are deemed valid.
We have seen a lot of penalties given to teams where the evidence of an actual foul is light, if not non-existent.
Certain players like Sterling, Young, Alli and Kane seem to be able to conjure up penalties almost at will.
The trailing leg, left especially to be caught, is common. Going down when the touch by a defender does not justify it is another regular occurrence, as is the attacker being already on his way down before contact.
As these are now too common to be ignored, one might have thought that PGMOL would recognise that they are being conned too often and, firstly, train their members to spot them, even if they may only have a split second to do so, and, secondly, make a specific announcement that, in the future, any player who goes down either before the contact, or where the contact is so minimal as not to justify falling, will be booked and then subsequently punished with a suspension.
The fact that they do not do so, indicates, either that cannot see the problem, which would be remarkable, or have reasons to ignore it, hence the feeling of bias.
To rely on statistics is dangerous I think, so it may be better to rely on what we can see, and what we can see stinks.
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Thanks Shotta. Show me the money.
As proven with the invincibles not even the best club team ever seen in this land could win a football match on what was undeniably a tilted pitch. Reyes was not the last AFC footballer to be hacked out of the league. As Shard comments, it is not a mystery how AFC induced Arsene Wenger out of his self imposed exile from not just French but European Football and how this marriage has lasted twenty years. Successfully. This is a simple understanding and no amout of ofuscation on adherance to the lies of statistcs (whilst typing said concerns upin a calculator!) can hide why it is that these two are still happily married, in spite of the ideological/evangelical media’s constant attacks on the Football Club that has not adopted a leveraged peonage based financial mis-model.
When will the gallent podcastateers and blaggers stop attacking AFC Footballers (Bellerin) and when will they grow some Footballs, and support Arsenal Football Club?
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Shame I can’t (speed) type…or spell!
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I understand your approach Shots, I appreciate your faith in the value of data. But I repeat the pain I made to Shard about the swirl of data (evidence) not providing proof.
You raise the reasonable point that I chose to look at a couple of years and therefore over such a short period the results may not be indicative of the trend over a long period.
Two points; I used the most recent years because they were handy and relevant to where we are today at AFC. Second longer trends are necessarily made up of shorter units of data which may or may not show a continuous trend, or may divert in a significant way at a certain point.
Extending the scope beyond the two seasons earlier lets look back five seasons;
12/13 Penalties Against 6 – Points 73
13/14 6 – 79
14/15 3 – 75
15/16 1 – 71
16/17 10 – 75
Show me the relationship between the number of penalties awarded and the pints we earn at the end of the season ?
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I’d feel like I’ve earned 75 pints and the season is still on (banned smiley)
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Shotta
I would like to point out that Moss and his lino not only got the offside decision wrong, the Pgmol decided to completely reinterpret the rule to justify and brand it the correct call.
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The worst thing was that no one pointed this out in the mainstream press that they were talking a pile of shite
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Not like the one against Everton then ?
(flings himself headfirst into trench)
Slightly better news from the Boss on Lacazette today, a little ahead of schedule in his recovery and Rambo possibly fit for Sunday.
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Lovely bit of slo-mo for the connoisseur;
https://twitter.com/FootballFunnys/status/965670741571227648
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As always a Post on data brings out some very intense discussions. My work relies a great deal on data, and I am intrigued by the personalisation of the term once it hits the blogs.
Data is, to me, at least, not an entity or a thing, that speaks the ‘truth’ – it is simply a collection of facts and statistics that can be used for reference or analysis purposes to help decision making (like I do in the financial world) or simply to give background information, and is usually accessible from reliable, dedicated sources via a computer.
Relevant qualitative or quantitive information gleaned from collected data over any given period, needs to be interpreted by experts in their field to arrive at, or predict, likely outcomes.
Luckily for football fans there is no end of experts out there — well us, actually, able to analyse or mine the data to calculate relevant trends or patterns in order to predict likely outcomes.
The downside is that there is likely to be no end of outcomes arrived at, unless this information is analysed objectively with an open mind, in an agreed and systematic manner — with personal biases put aside.
To achieve an agreed result based on the untainted analysis of the trends and patterns – all those who ‘hate’ the PGMOL – and all those who (allegedly) ‘love’ the PGMOL need to take a walk — and so too, do those, like me, who reserve their energies for professional data analysis, or data mining, in their workplaces, rather than argue with the other million football experts who believe their conflicted outcomes are evidentially correct.
Good luck with that.
(Makes for an interesting football subject matter in a Post, and the ensuing heated comments.) lol
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I am an epistemological relativist* Henry – not a PGMOL controlled nihilist.
*i.e. spouts whatever convenient shit suits him on the day
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Anicoll,
We all are, good sirrah.
It is a fine line we walk in all aspects of life trying to err on the side of caution regarding the (subjective) distinction between our justified beliefs and simple opinions.
Anyway — you claim you are an epistemological relativist, which I can believe is correct — whilst you brand poor little me as a wrong ‘un — which is undoubtedly true — but, I would ask you to keep that under your unlikely headgear. lol
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Not like the one against Everton then ?
Andy was that meant in response to my 2:53? Which Everton one are we talking about? (Shells trench)
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It was the celebrated Mark Twain, whose commonsense observations are timeless and often quoted, who is credited with the quote: Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics. Regrettably Twain had a cavalier attitude to statistics and as a result lost a fortune in a series of bad investments due to his disregard for the numbers underlying his investments. As a result towards his latter years he had to undertake a series of demanding speaking tours at home and abroad to reclaim some of the fortune he lost. If I had a similar cavalier attitude to data in my day job I would have long been fired.
Unfortunately there remains a dismissive attitude to data among the general population. Even clearly intelligent people are proud to make a patently unscientific statement that they would rely on what they see rather than analysis of a large data set. This kind of nonsense would make our ignorant, unschooled fore-parents proud. They were happy to support the clerics who locked up Galileo for heresy. For god’s sake we sent a man to the moon on the basis of Einstein’s Theory of relativity which was tested by data from several prior space missions.
I had my epiphany in the great financial crisis when I refused to act on the data that screamed an over-valued stock market and as a consequence lost a small fortune. It was then I learned there is biased data by those who want to seduce the naive into investing into an over-priced market versus those who relied on the unbiased data and were willing to sit out the hype and await the regression to the mean (or successfully short the market).
When it comes to the PL, 20 years of data convinced me that the ref bias is most measurable and evident in the penalties-against. All the attempts to get into speculation into how penalties-For or -Against translate into points for or against Arsenal, with no means of measuring such a relationship, are simply attempts to sidetrack from the main issue. There was evidence for years that Darrell Hair was making strange decisions but the cricketing authorities refuse to act until a scandal landed on their doorstep.
If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, you will sooner or later step in a load of duck-shit (as I can personally attest).
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The strangest decision made by the disgraced official Hair was to call Murali for throwing. With the full support of his board (local association).
Either these people belived that Murali should have only have competed in the Paralympics, been banned for cheating, or simply not just allowed to play the sport at all.
Hair never toured South Asia again (different and possibly pissed off Associations), and eventually he was seen and understood by all except his keenest supporters (believers?) to have brought the sport into disrepute.
As a result of his actions that great Australian Cricket team will never be considered alongside the other great cricket teams.
The ACB’s arrogant and self defeating stupidity reminded me of the people who chose Don Revie* over Brian Clough.
*retired in ‘disgrace’ to the Gulf…I’ll leave any further comment on that one to my pal sports plundit extraordinaire Alan Partdrige.
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https://www.arsenal.com/news/success-our-hale-end-youngsters
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For me what we have is:
Fact penalties against can be very harmful, or near deadly, to your chances in an individual game, depending on time given, score at that point,etc.
Reverse true in terms of pens for being helpful in an individual game.
Fact our overall pen record- for and against- has been poor over a long period, relative to our rivals.
A massive sustained drop coinciding closely with Riley’s appointment. Which could simply be the result of us not being anything like as strong or as good as we were in the first half of Wenger’s reign, though we were still good enough until last year to always make top four.
Fact it makes little football sense for us to have a record more similar to teams like Sunderland and other lower half teams or perennial strugglers than to teams higher in table.
Subjective opinion on individual penalty decisions as they occur in matches.
Subjective opinion (but really fact, come on) that there is an awful lot of shameless pen hunting in the league, which ,despite what any pundit will tell you (‘they’re all it!’), we are barely involved in.
Subjective opinion that teams are almost certainly coached, or at least massively encouraged, to behave this way.
Subjective opinion that pgmol are at best powerless to learn effective lessons about this, and remain as or more vulnerable to deception as they would be if they had no access to the past and could not review previous action.
The hostility you would expect them to feel, and wariness you would expect them to exhibit, towards players who are known to try fool refs does not exist; nor any warmth towards any team who consistently show more honesty. Oh yeah, but that’s just subjective opinion.
Suppose it’s a fact that a team with a poor record for conceding pens is more likely to be nervous in aspects of their defending than a team with a better record, and should be. For instance, during Leicester’s mad title surge their defenders undoubtedly felt emboldened to do a lot of grabbing and grappling in the box, to great effect.
Fact Riley’s performance in game fifty was…highly controversial. Subjective opinion it was diabolical.
Fact Riley around that time awarded Utd an extraordinary amount of pens.
And so forth. What to make of it all?
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I’d addd a further Fact: If you have attackers who dribble into the box with the ball at their feet at speed then your team will earn more penalties, whether they dive or not.
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Following Andy’s skepticism on relation of penalty to points won, I went to look at some figures because I thought it was interesting.
The PL unfortunately doesn’t give out statistics on overall points won, so I had to go season by season. But I figured the better way to do it is via position since the same number of points doesn’t mean the same position every year.
So, is there a relationship between position in the table to no of penalties conceded? The avg penalties conceded by position since 2009-10 till 2016-17
1. 3.00
2. 2.63
3. 3.38
4. 5.13
5. 6.25
6. 4.50
7. 4.38
8. 3.88
9. 4.63
10 4.63
11 5.75
12 4.50
13 5.75
14 4.63
15 6.63
16 5.38
17 5.00
18 6.25
19 5.25
20 5.00
There’s some variation but generally the numbers seem to get higher the lower down the table you go, especially in the bottom half. Which is what you would expect.
Arsenal have finished 2nd once, 3rd 3 times, 4th 3 times and 5th once.
The pens conceded for Arsenal vs the avg for that position is
Pos 2 Pens Conceded 1 Avg 1 Position Avg 2.62 Difference (-1.62)
Pos 3 Pens Conceded 14 Avg 4.67 Pos Avg 3.38 Difference (+1.29)
Pos 4 Pens Conceded 21 Avg 7 Pos Avg 5.13 Difference (+1.87)
Pos 5 Pens Conceded 10 Avg 10 Pos Avg 6.25 Difference (+3.75)
So Arsenal have conceded more than the average pens for their corresponding position in the table 7 times out of the 8 seasons, with the season we finished 2nd being the only exception,
If you remove the Arsenal pens from the calculation of the avg, the divergence of just how many pens more we are conceding becomes more pronounced.
Pos 2 Arsenal Avg 1 Other Avg 2.86 Diff (-1.86)
Pos 3 Arsenal Avg 4.67 Other Avg 2.60 Diff (+2.07)
Pos 4 Arsenal Avg 7 Other Avg 4 Difference (+3.00)
Pos 5 Arsenal Avg 10 Other Avg 5.71 Difference (+4.29)
Certainly not proof of anything, but yet another ‘weird’ statistic.
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Thanks for this superb article, and for your follow-up comments, Shotta.
The comments are ‘banging’, (modern parlance). PA, you Smashed it, innit.
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“Fact: If you have attackers who dribble into the box with the ball at their feet at speed then your team will earn more penalties, whether they dive or not.”
In fact that’s not a fact for Arsenal. “Unfact”. (Wryly smiley)
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Another weird thing is that the PL doesn’t record penalties awarded/won for both teams or players. Only pens scored from. Makes it tougher to compare pens for and against.
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Arsene Wenger said Mesut Ozil’s immune system is “a bit in trouble” after the German playmaker was bedridden with an illness again this week.
Ozil has been ruled out of Thursday’s Europa League game against Ostersunds after he spent Monday and Tuesday in bed, Wenger said — although he may have been rested anyway given Arsenal’s 3-0 lead from the first leg.
It’s the fourth time in little over a year that Ozil has been sick. He missed four games with illness in the 2016-17 season, as well as matches against Huddersfield Town and Burnley in November.
Asked why the German gets sick so often, Wenger said: “Ozil’s immune system is a bit in trouble at the moment and I don’t know why. I hope we can improve that medically.”
Ozil played the full 90 minutes in freezing temperatures in Ostersund last week, and Wenger said he trained as normal this past weekend before getting sick on Monday.
Ozil was back in full training on Wednesday, and Wenger said he was set to “work hard” on Thursday in order to be fit for Sunday’s Carabao Cup final against Manchester City.
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I recently watched the 2nd half of Ars v ManU on the ArsPlaya. I thought the match had been drawn 3-3, and having not seen it live I tuned in to see the great comeback.
Fact: My assumption about the final score was wrong.
Have a look at the last 20 mins of that match (or, all of it), then go and wash your “dribbling into penalty mouth” out with soap.
(detergent smiley).
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ACL Soccer
@ACL_Soccer
37m37 minutes ago
Arsenal’s Diamond Club has become the first sports stadium restaurant to be awarded Three Stars by the Sustainable Restaurant Association
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Ranty
wot you on about?
Haven’t you heard? Players like Wilshere, they, all together now:
They hold onto the ball too long!
Why he can’t be like Dele Alli* i don’t know
A player who has less technical ability on the ball then Will Grigg, who can’t ever dribble past an opponent hence the penchant fot throwing oneself onto the ground for the approval and sacntion of all the Darryl Hair’s out there and the idiotic associations that support such idiots, idiots like the new England Woman’s manager – Don’t look (away) now but if you recall he was a player who on occasion (against The Arsenal) was allowed to hack at will, though that never saved him from ridicule when he wore the national shirt , given that he wasn’t ever that good at the old Football malarky, bit like Alli then (keep yer eyes on the Football!) – this manager of one of the nation’s football teams has in fact called for the kicking of AFC footballers on MOTD….
…not an opinion, unfortunately, but that is the record.
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Shard at 10:48 am –
I did a piece last month on penalties vs avg league position and [surprise, surprise] Arsenal of all the top-6 had the least correlation. Link to the blog at https://wordpress.com/post/positivelyarsenal.com/20038. My finding was:
“Arsenal: Only a 40% Correlation between Penalties-For and Avg League Position” vs a 84% correlation between average league position and Penalties-For across the entire league.
As usual the denialists refused to acknowledge the statistics based on the unbiased data. It is typical of human nature. We ignore and dismiss anything that conflicts with our “normalcy bias”.
If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, you will sooner or later step in a load of duck-shit. The bias of the PGMOL is like that sticky, smelly, gooey stuff.
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Well that’s 40 minutes of my life wasted. Thanks shotta
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Yes fins, Grigg, who I don’t recall, joins a long list of those calling for and justifying KTSOOA, (kick the shot out of Arsenal). Boooooooooooo.
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Great stuff Shotta. If this league and PGMOL are not in any way corrupt, they have a real poor way of showing it.
A colluding fawning non investigative media, the same players allowed to cheat on a weekly basis with no punishments, ref hush money on retirement, never a word from Riley. Then there is what we see. What we now know wenger accused a ref or two of in the dressing rooms. We saw what happen to RVP in Barca, what Dancing Dean did at West Brom, the offsides at City, the Spuds diving, which actually go back to Bales day, and beyond despite their current crop being amoong the worst I have seen.
Penalties against are costing us, ok, I would look at some of our GK coaching here, but.
The question is, if, as multitudes of stats indicate, why do Arsenal get a hard time?
Failing to play certain games? Not “English” enough? Or, perhaps, an indicator lies in the view of a few retired refs I have heard talking about the club. I cannot find sources/links, but seem to remember some of them talking about Wenger as a good , respectful guy, but that they at least believed he was pressurizing them into reducing contact levels in games, if so, can only imagine how that went down.
Then, there was the fergie/ LMA subservients thing, Fergie once had reason to feel threatened by Wenger, we know he had considerable influence over refs, through whatever means, we all know what his lesser LMA accolytes did to some of our players. Fergie is no longer a manager, but some of these refs are still around, as are some managers. Sam, Pulis Mark Hughes and others always knew for certain what they could get away with against Arsenal team when they play at home.
Wenger may or may not stay beyond this contract. The new man, if he has any sense, will see some of this, bolster our defence/MF so we make less last ditch tackles in the area when caught up field, thus reducing the opportunities for pens against. I know I labour the point but one of the few issues I really dont get about Wenger is defending, just cannot see beyond this issue costing us and making it a lot easier for any biased refs, but thats down to a man know knows far more than I.
I am intrigued to know how these type of stats stack up a while after wenger departs, I have my theories!
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