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🚨💣With all the talk about refereeing in the Premier League and claims of how certain teams are being either favored or mistreated by the referees -- I've put together stats measuring the amount of Touches in the Penalty Area each PL needs to get awarded a penalty this and last season. I've also created a reference group including La Liga and Serie A teams. I intend to follow up on this stat during the course of the season. 🔺Why use this stat? There is naturally a clear correlation between Touches in the Penalty Area and Penalties -- and in comparison with for example La Liga, the avg. is 143 with all teams but 5 being in the interval 130 +/- 40 the last two full seasons. In Serie A, the average is 144, with all teams but 4 being in the interval 130 +/- 40 the last two full seasons. Athletico Madrid needs the highest amount of touches in La Liga, 300, per penalty awarded and in Seria A, Udinese leads the pack with 283 touches. Bournemouth is not listed since it hasn't received any penalties. It can be noted that the PL have a much bigger spread than La Liga and Serie A, with only 8 teams being within a spread of +/- 40 if we set the target at 155. 🔺Comparing the PL data with La Liga and Serie A does confirm the common view that there is very little consistency in how referees call the PL game. While La Liga and Serie A both has 75% of the teams within a narrow span, the PL can only collect 50% of the team within a +/- 40 span. I applaud the PL's intention to award fewer penalties, but when it is not supported by the rule book and the on pitch referees get significant freedom to make it up as he see fit -- without much support from VAR intending to correct missed calls -- the result will become a lot less consistent and more "unfair". 🔺Looking at the PL teams, why does City, West Ham, Brentford, Fulham and Nottingham get so many penalties? One answer can be that they don't! Those teams would rank right in the middle of the pack in La Liga and Serie A. The top 3 in La Liga are Getafe, Mallorca and Real and the top 3 in Serie A is Napoli, Roma and Sassuolo. Not surprisingly a bit more direct teams. City is perhaps the big outlier, since they rank so high despite playing a very very patient brand of football. 🔺A more relevant question is probably why Manchester United, Everton and Crystal Palace gets so extremely few penalties. Only TWO teams in La Liga and Serie A needs more than 250 touches in the penalty area to get a pen (Athletico Madrid and Udinese), while all of MUFC, Everton and Crystal needs over 310. I am of course biased as a Manchester United fan -- but with wingers like Rashford, Antony, Sancho and Garnacho it is very hard to see any other reason than significant unintended (?) bias against MUFC behind these numbers -- since ETH came in. If we instead look at the Ole Gunnar Solskjaer era -- the result is probably the opposite with MUFC on the other side of the scale. At the same time, looking back at the Fergie era -- MUFC surprisingly does not seem to have been favored at all by the referees, I will come back with a post on that when I get the time. From my point of view, the difference for MUFC between the OGS and ETH era illustrates the -- big -- problem with refereeing in the PL. With the on field referee given so much discretionary power to just make up the rules as he sees fit -- and a VAR system that seems to see it as as its top priority to make the on field referee 'look good' (can you label it any other way?) -- the results will be very unfair and impacted by factors that should be completely irrelevant. Let me know what you think!

BREAKING: Bournemouth have agreed a short-term deal with former Arsenal and West Ham midfielder Jack Wilshere.