Who are the best and worst Premier League referees for Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester United and Liverpool?

The Gunners have only won a third of games officiated by Mike Dean

Mark Critchley
Friday 02 October 2015 05:56 EDT
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Dean, left, dismisses Arsenal defender Gabriel in the recent Premier League clash with Chelsea
Dean, left, dismisses Arsenal defender Gabriel in the recent Premier League clash with Chelsea (Getty Images)

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Since the hot-blooded derby between Arsenal and Chelsea at Stamford Bridge two weeks ago, referee Mike Dean has come in for a bit of criticism.

His dismissal of Gabriel and failure to punish Diego Costa angered many Gunners fans, some being so furious that they launched a petition to stop him from refereeing another Arsenal game ever again.

But is the Emirates' aversion to the Wirral-based official based in fact or just blind fury? According to a statistical analysis ran by betting company Bwin, the petition may have a point.

Statistically, Dean is Arsenal's bogeyman in black. The Gunners have only won 33.3 per cent of their games that he has officiated since 2011/12.

By contrast, Jonathan Moss should be much more popular with the Emirates crowd. Arsene Wenger's side have picked up maximum points every time he has taken charge of one of their fixtures.

The side with the lowest win percentage when Moss is in the middle is the Premier League's other team in north London, Tottenham Hotspur. Mauricio Pochettino's men fare better with Lee Mason, winning 75 per cent of their matches that he has presided over.

Manchester United struggle when Andre Marriner is in the middle, only coming out on top 36.36 per cent of the time, but Kevin Friend lives up to his name at Old Trafford. United have won 90 per cent of their matches with him in charge.

Neil Swarbrick, meanwhile, is a lucky charm for Chelsea and Manchester City but a bad omen for Liverpool. The Merseysiders have won just 28.57 per cent of matches that the Lancashire-based referee has officiated.

An infographic showing Bwin's statistical findings
An infographic showing Bwin's statistical findings (Getty Images)

The betting company also attempted to gauge the relative popularity of each referee by analysing tweets mentioning them over a 30-day period for positive and negative sentiment.

Kevin Friend, apparently, received the most positive reactions by some distance but we'll cautiously put that down to a lot of people tweeting about a mate called Kevin.

The next most popular was Lee Mason while, unsurprisingly, Dean finds himself at the bottom of the pile. He shares the lowest 'sentiment' score with Martin Atkinson and was mentioned in over 113,000 tweets during the whole 30-day period, which included his controversial display at Stamford Bridge.

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