In light of the latest accusations of diving in the box levelled against Manchester United’s Ashley Young and social media sites buzzing with jokes of certain referees being legends of clubs for giving too many penalties to particular clubs, I decided to analyse penalty trends in recent Premier League seasons. Are the referees really partial towards traditional big four clubs, i.e. Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea?
As is evident from the following graph, Manchester United (2002-03 and the current season), Arsenal (twice) and Chelsea have received a league-high number of penalties in 4 of the last 9 Premier League seasons. That is, in only 4 of the last 9 seasons has a big club topped the “penalties for” charts. Liverpool have not managed to top the penalty charts even once in this period.
Apart from these four seasons, the graphs of each of the traditional big four have generally hovered around the league average and lesser towards the league-high side. But this is pretty much deceptive. A closer look at the trend (by excluding the big four from league average) shows that the big four have a minor advantage over an average league team.
From these I could not comprehensively conclude that referees were partial towards the bigger clubs. Number of penalties received does not tell the entire story. The big four probably receive more penalties than the rest because they attack more and force more defensive errors from the opposition. So I contacted the people at Debatable Decisions who record the wrong decisions of referees for and against the Premier League teams (unfortunately, they have been doing this only over the last year) and they helped me to the list of erroneous decisions of referees on events in the 18-yard box for 2011/12.
The ‘Big Four’ clubs have received 7 penalties for events that shouldn’t have led to a penalty with Man Utd accounting for 5 them and Ashley Young alone, 3. Chelsea are yet benefit from a decisional error in the penalty area while Arsenal and Liverpool have had 1 each in their favour.
On the other hand, Liverpool have every reason to be furious at the referees, having had 11 clear penalties turned down. Arsenal and Chelsea are next with 6 penalty shouts turned down with Manchester United following closely on 5. Arsenal have been victims of 4 penalties given incorrectly against them. Chelsea, 2, Man Utd, 1, and Liverpool, 0, complete this series.
Considering the ratio of number of penalties received to the theoretical number of penalties a club should have received (i.e. penalties received + clear penalties turned down) as a measure of likeliness of a referee giving the club a penalty (in 2011/12), Liverpool stand a 5/16 chance of winning a penalty – a mere 31.25%. On the flipside, Manchester United have had a 68.75% chance of getting a penalty in their favour this season. Arsenal and Chelsea have increasingly moderate 33.3% and 45.5% respective chances of winning a spot-kick. Here’s the summary of the debatable penalty decisions for and against the four clubs in question:
I hope you will have your say and will take a dig in the comments section below. And, let me make it clear. This piece was aimed at the four clubs as a whole and I have no intentions of singling out any club.
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