Martin Atkinson took charge of his sixth Arsenal game this season as the Premier League and FA continue to give this man more Arsenal matches than any other but even he couldn’t stop Arsenal beating West Ham.

Referee Martin Atkinson speaks with Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang of Arsenal and Luka Milivojevic of Crystal Palace during the Premier League match between Arsenal FC and Crystal Palace at Emirates Stadium on October 27, 2019 in London, United Kingdom.
LONDON, ENGLAND – OCTOBER 27: Referee Martin Atkinson speaks with Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang of Arsenal and Luka Milivojevic of Crystal Palace during the Premier League match between Arsenal FC and Crystal Palace at Emirates Stadium on October 27, 2019 in London, United Kingdom. (Photo by Catherine Ivill/Getty Images)

Across the Premier League and FA Cup, Arsenal have played 30 games. Despite there being 21 Premier League referees, Atkinson had taken charge of almost 17% of Arsenal’s games this season and been involved as either referee, fourth official or in charge of VAR in 23% of Arsenal games.

After he refereed Arsenal’s game against West Ham that total moved to over 25%.

Just think about that for a minute…that’s a quarter of all Arsenal games have involved Martin Atkinson.

As you all know, we’ve been highlighting all season how Arsenal get more yellows than any other side while also needing fewer fouls than any other team to get a yellow in the first place, although this recently changed as we were bumped to second place behind Bournemouth who I’m sure we can all agree are a significantly more thuggish team than Arsenal.

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This, of course, leads to feelings among fans that the officials are against Arsenal. Then again, all fans think that of referees and their team, but in Arsenal’s case, the stats back up the paranoia. Well, some of it at least.

Of course, you could suggest that Arsenal just make a lot of yellow card challenges that others don’t, but we know that’s not the case. Just this week, we can point to Matteo Guendouzi being booked for exaggerating the motion of setting down the ball while a Portsmouth player was allowed to break Lucas Torreira’s ankle with his trailing leg without reprimand. You can say what you like about ‘winning the ball’ but that is irrelevant and not even part of the laws of the game when it comes to dangerous play. If you cannot slide tackle without your trailing leg scissoring your opponent’s ankle, then you need to learn how to tackle properly.

Yes, accidents happen in football but what many like to call an ‘accident’ or ‘momentum’ is simply technically bad tackling and that IS something talked about in the rules. Some people ought to read them sometime.

Sorry, tangent. My point is, as I’ve said all season, there is a perception, happily fuelled by the media and pundits, that Arsenal are a soft side. This somehow translates into the brains of officials as ‘if an Arsenal player is rolling around they probably aren’t really hurt but if an opposition player does the same the Arsenal player must have done something really wrong.’

It’s not conscious, but it’s happening and no amount of broken Arsenal bones can override the dominating ‘soft’ narrative.

On top of that, failing to have an equal distribution of referees is simply not fair.

We all know individual referees apply the laws of the game in different ways. You cannot, for instance, compare Mike Dean’s style with that of Jon Moss and say they are in anyway similar.

When you factor in Chris Kavanagh, almost 50% of Arsenal games this season have been refereed by just three referees from a list of 21.

Don’t tell me that doesn’t have an impact…

Arsenal v West Ham officials

  • Referee: Martin Atkinson
  • Assistants: Lee Betts, Sian Massey-Ellis
  • Fourth official: John Brooks
  • VAR: Kevin Friend
  • Assistant VAR: Simon Beck
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