Home sides are 0-2-1 in Mark Halsey's three starts this season.
What better way than for me, the 4th Official, to give you all a little insight into how certain referees mean a lot to certain matches that you could/would potentially bet on. If you've been overlooking the ref factor, then its about time you got with the program. Step into my office, as we analyze the 12th man.
As you all know, there is a system in place that promotes/demotes referees based on their past performances. For example, Mike Dean gets demoted down to the Championship a lot, because its official, he is an awful official. I won't back that statement up with stats or facts because I don't have to, this is the internet. And rightfully so, Mike Dean sucks. That being said, the EPL certainly has their darlings. Howard Webb is obviously the first that comes to mind. He is the face of English officiating. Why? We have no idea. He is horribly inconsistent and is prone to make sensationalist calls/no-calls, particularly in big matches. In case you didn't see the world cup final (we envy you if you missed it, the match was awful), Howard Webb blew it. Entirely. So, not surprisingly, he has been used rather sparingly so far this season in the EPL. He has only made 4 starts through round eight of the season. We say good! Before we start breaking down statistics though, here are the officials appointed for this weekend's batch of EPL matches:
Appointed Officials 16/10/2010
Arsenal v Birmingham City
Martkin Atkinson
Bolton Wanderers v Stoke City
Peter Walton
Fulham v Tottenham Hotspur
Mike Dean
Manchester United v West Bromwich Albion
Mark Jones
Newcastle United v Wigan Athletic
Mark Halsey
Wolverhampton Wanderers v West Ham United
Mark Clattenburg
Aston Villa v Chelsea
Lee Mason
Appointed Officials 17/10/2010
Everton v Liverpool
Howard Webb
Blackpool v Manchester City
Phil Dowd
Grab a cup of coffee (or tea!) and prepare yourself for a statistical onslaught. The chart below has a list of every official who has started a match so far this EPL season. It also shows you how many matches total they have started, so you will have to refer back to this chart to put the other numbers in perspective.
First things first. Phil Dowd has the most starts of any referee this year. Personally, we like that because we think Phil Dowd, for the most part, does a great job officiating. Its also nice to see that Howard Webb has only officiated four matches so far, however between him and Mike Dean, they've started 10 games too many...
We really like this chart. Why? Just look at it! If I had just randomly told you one day that in the three matches Mark Halsey has officiated the home team has never won, would you believe me? Probably not, but now you are a believer. There are a few glaring statistics when looking at this chart. From a betting point of view, it helps betting a draw/away team upset. Between the 14 matches that Marriner, Attwell, and Lee Mason have officiated, the home side won a total of 3 matches. The rest: 8 draws and 3 away wins. What does this mean? It means whenever any of those three refs are starting, bet against the home side, and depending on the value you can get from your sportsbook, try and earn some extra scratch on the lucrative draw/big underdog away team. On the other side of the spectrum, Martin Atkinson & Mark Clattenburg have both officiated into the home team's hands so far this season. Together they've started 12 matches, 8 of which the home side won, the other 4 were draws. Yes, you read that correctly: The away team has never won in the 12 games that Atkinson & Clattenburg have called. Thats all we'll say for now regarding this chart. It isn't rocket science so we will let you guys take a longer look to figure out which consistencies/inconsistencies you want to use to influence the way you bet.
This chart is pretty self-explanatory. Here we get a good look at which refs are whistle happy. In this case, its Kevin Friend by a country mile. He averages 4-15 more whistles per match than any other official. This is something you may want to take into consideration when betting on a match including a team that usually dominates possession. We say this because if K. Friend is calling that match, you can bet your ass that the opportunities to score for that team will increase ten-fold when you consider all the additional deadball/freekick situations they will receive. On the contrary, refs who tend to keep their whistle arm at their side, such as Watson, Foy, and Michael Jones, will drastically play into the hands of the more physical sides in the EPL. You know who they are... (Stoke/Blackburn/Wolves etc.)
This is my favorite visual of the bunch. Now we can see which refs have a tendency to be influenced by the home crowd. Not surprisingly, the same two officials (Atkinson & Clattenburg) who away sides have never won with in 12 matches show exactly why according to these numbers. They show a noticeable amount of calls against the away team compared to the home team. They aren't alone however, the worst culprit is Mark Halsey. Lee Probert, Lee Mason, and Phil Dowd also have a tendency to favor the home team too. If you are looking for an away team upset, look no further than Anthony Taylor's matches. He has called a whopping 63% of his calls against the home team this year.
The rest of this information you can analyze yourself. I've written too much already. Just know that these last set of tables will help you know when a ref will potentially cause the total amount of goals to increase, thus you can make some cash on betting over the goal total. Refs like Michael Oliver, Michael Jones, and Martin Atkinson can't help themselves when it comes to issuing penalties.
There is tons of information here, too much to break down in writing, so we will leave this database to you all to do with it what you will. This information will now be a new section on the blog and it will be updated after each round of the EPL so you can see how each refs tendencies have or haven't changed. You know what they say, some people never change...
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