Arsenal fans don’t like Mike Dean. This much we know.
The club might have won the 2004 Charity Shield, their first major game under the experienced referee’s stewardship, but since then things have gone downhill fast.
It all came to a head in the 2-0 Premier League defeat to Chelsea. Gunners supporters were so infuriated by Dean’s performance, which saw him send off Gabriel and Santi Cazorla but let Diego Costa get away with an awful lot.
A petition was set up, quickly gaining tens of thousands of signatures. But are the fans right to be so aggrieved?
A professor has put it to the test, comparing the club’s results with the 47-year-old in charge to those without Dean’s involvement in the middle. It turns out Arsenal might be on to something…
According to research from stats expert Andy Field, the Gunners have won more than twice as many games without Dean in charge (60%) than with him (26%).
But we should note that the data, from the 2005/06 season onward (so no room for that inconvenient Charity Shield game) will always be impacted by the relatively small sample size. It’s also worth noting that a disproportionate amount of the games with Dean have come against stronger sides, against whom you’d naturally expect to fare worse.
Still, some research has been done to this end too…
https://twitter.com/janhopis/status/645513192760868865
Our opinion? The jury is still out.
