The Webb report: or how I learned to stop worrying and love Man U

In the 2004-2005 season, Howard Webb became a full time Premier League Official. Since then he’s officiated 289 games between the Premier League, the FA Cup, the League Cup, the Champions League, and the World Cup.

He’s steadily grown in stature as well, starting out officiating the League Championship finals and moving up to the fiery League Cup final between Chelsea and Arsenal which ended 2-1 in both goals and red cards given. In a sense, that match is what put Howard Webb on the map and from there he has gone on to referee the lions share of the top four clashes along with a Champions League and World Cup final game.

Those finals have been notable for the brutality that teams were able to get away with. The Carling Cup final saw Diaby knock John Terry out and a mass brawl after the Chelsea midfield pushed Arsenal to the brink. The Champions League final was a precursor to the World Cup final in a sense, as Mark van Bommel stretched the edge of legality to incredible levels before finally picking up a booking. But in that World Cup final it was Nigel de Jong who would get away with the most egregious foul when he kung-fu kicked Xabi Alonso and got only a yellow card. Even Howard Webb admitted that he should have given a red card:

One of the things I would change is the color of the card for De Jong’s tackle. Having seen it again from my armchair several times in slow motion and from different angles I can see that it was a red-card offense.

It’s tempting to get into the psychology of the referee here and question how it is that he saw the foul and failed to give a red card but I want to avoid that pitfall. Likewise, when we start asking questions about specific incidents we can run into the problem of an incident being exceptional: one dubious penalty call does not show as much bias as several dubious penalty calls. That’s why instead, since we have a huge record of his refereeing, if there is an actual pattern it should be easy to discern from all of the numbers rather than just a few incidents that stick out in the memory.

Using the wonderfully complete Soccerbase.com I was able to create this spreadsheet (XLS or Open Office .ods format) of all Howard Webb’s Premier League, League and FA Cups, Charity Shield, European, International and World Cup games starting with the 2004-2005 season.

I then combed through the data and looked at overall records for each of the top four clubs of the last 6 seasons (including Liverpool), compiled goals scored, goals against, total points, and points average for all four teams.

In order for the reality of this table to make sense, you have to remember that in this period Chelsea and Manchester United have won an equal number of titles (3 each), Liverpool dropped out of the top four one year and Arsenal have finished an average of 3rd place with over 80 points per season (an average of 2.1 ppg).

Arsenal’s record then of 9-8-9 is fairly amazing. Even if you remove the Carling Cup final loss and the Charity Shield loss as anomalies, Arsenal still have a record of 9-8-7 and an average of 1.46 points per game when Howard Webb is the official. To give you some more context, here’s where Arsenal’s record with Howard Webb is compared to other teams on the list (random sample)

Manchester United 21-4-7 — 2.09 PPG
Liverpool 14-6-8 — 1.71 PPG
Bolton 10-7-5 — 1.68 PPG
Chelsea 11-7-6 — 1.67 PPG
Sunderland 4-4-2 — 1.6 PPG
Stoke 4-6-2 — 1.5 PPG
Man City 8-4-7 — 1.47 PPG
Tottenham 9-8-8 — 1.4 PPG
Everton 8-9-7 — 1.375 PPG
Arsenal 9-8-9 — 1.35 PPG
Birmingham 4-10-3 — 1.3 PPG

Bolton has a better record with Howard Webb as referee than Chelsea. Arsenal’s overall record with Howard Webb is worse than Stoke City and their average points per game when he is the official would put them as a mid-table team. Basically, Howard Webb’s record as a referee of an Arsenal game is slightly better than his record with perennial relegation candidates like Birmingham.

The head to head record between top 4 clubs is pretty much exactly the same, but only for Arsenal.

Man Utd, Liverpool, and Chelsea all drop points against the other top 4 opponents but Arsenal does not. Combined with the overall record and startling stats about clubs like Bolton the only conclusion you can draw is that when Arsenal play any opponent, as long as Howard Webb is the official, the match is like a top four match. This would also account for the fact that Arsenal have a tiny goal differential in all matches that Webb officiates, while our overall goal difference over the last 6 seasons have seen eye popping numbers ranging from +53 a season to +28 as our low.

The other trend that is apparent in the numbers is that Howard Webb has a huge bias toward the home team: Arsenal’s home record is 6-4-0 and away 3-4-9;  Liverpool home 7-3-1, away 7-3-7; Chelsea’s record is 7-3-1 home, and away 4-3-5; and, of course, Manchester United are 12-1-1 at home with Howard Webb and 9-3-6 away.

Despite his home record bias, United still come out on top as shown by the points average for away games.

United 1.666
Liverpool 1.4
Chelsea 1.25
Arsenal 0.81

Arsenal earn half the points that United earn on our away trips when Howard Webb is the official. It’s important to remember that this isn’t head-to-head points, this is Arsenal’s overall away record with Howard Webb.

I honestly don’t want to believe that there is something sinister at work here because if the matches are a foregone conclusion then why would I want to watch them? If I wanted that type of entertainment I’d watch professional wrestling.  But the problem is that Arsenal’s record with Howard Webb is so far out of line with their record under all other officials that it’s hard not to take pause.

The discrepancy between Chelsea’s overall record and their record with Howard Webb is equally strange considering the fact that both United and Chelsea have been swapping titles for the last 6 years.  The first two years, Chelsea won the title with 95 and 91 points and last year, they scored 103 goals on the way to an 86 point total haul. Chelsea have been one of the most dominant teams of the last six years so how is it that if you take Chelsea’s two wins over Arsenal in the Charity Shield and Carling Cup away, they have zero head-to-head wins over other top four opponents and their overall record drops to 9-7-6 (1.55 PPG putting them between Stoke and Sunderland) when Howard Webb is the official?

I want to be clear, I don’t have any evidence that anything illegal is happening nor am I accusing Howard Webb of any biases. What I have done is looked at the record and frankly, it raises a lot of questions. Questions that could only be answered by looking at all of the teams and all of the referees over the last 6 seasons to see what other anomalies present themselves.

And finally, I’m just one guy, in my living room, crunching numbers. You will, no doubt find a problem with something I have written. Fair enough, just point it out. I have been wrong before and I have admitted it, I will gladly admit that I am wrong here. Oh, and before you accuse ME of bias, yes, I am biased. I support Arsenal.

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