He has only one yellow card in the league and only 0.6 fouls per match, after playing 2,259 minutes.
For direct references, Walker has 4 yellows and 1 foul per match, after playing 1,990 minutes; Dinho has 6 yellows, two reds, and 0.9 fouls per match, after playing 2,156 minutes.
Robertson’s yellow tally should have been doubled (or tripled depending on how you count yellow to red conversion) in our match against them alone. I can think of a few other matches where he miraculously walked away without a yellow being issued (and many fairly obvious fouls not being called). And that’s not even considering Alexander-Arnold (also should have gotten *at least* a yellow against us), Fabinho, Van Dijk, et al.
That tells you everything you need to know about how they have been refereed differently to us.
I think the missus would be most displeased, but I appreciate the proposal. ;-)
Cheers — took a bloody long time to compile and write up but I thought it was worth pointing out, if for no other reason than to dispel the false narrative with which the global sport media have been attempting to bludgeon everyone.
Not sure that is an accurate translation of “at the moment” but, even so, I think you are seriously underestimating the contribution of VAR, very favourable refereeing, and opposition “gifts” / truly miraculous inability to finish great chances (often on practically open nets) in the points difference you reference.
A simple stat that is at least *partially* impacted by those influences to help support my assertion:
We have won 5 games and lost 4 games by 1 goal (League).
Liverpool have won 13 and lost 0.
Now think of what happened in our games compared to what happened in theirs.
I am not implying that we should be above them right now, by any means — we would absolutely still be behind them in the table without VAR intervention (or lack thereof), favourable refereeing, and opposition “incompetence”, as we just haven’t been as consistently good this year as the past two seasons for a few reasons.
But I think it would not be unreasonable to say we could be going in to today’s match 9 points behind, with 18 points still left to play for.
And we have been in worse positions before and won the league. And Liverpool have been in better positions and lost it... twice.
My original point stands that there isn’t much evidence they are better than us “at the moment” and my new point is that they haven’t actually be *substantially* better than us over the course of the season. They have been better, but in the same way they have been “better” for periods in previous seasons. This time they just had a lot of other things go in their favour — *arguably* more than any recent winners, including us (even considering the historic season pause for the pandemic).
They won it, nothing will change that now, and it is medicine that has to be taken for next season. But there’s no reason we have to also gargle and swallow the snake oil being sold by their PR team and the media about them being the greatest ever PL side.
