Arsenal v Brighton, injuries, the referee’s form; Havertz to score or assist, the 2024 run

A luncthime match means the Untold team leaving their base in the East Mindland early in the morning without time for writing, so this is the expected team as per yesterday.  But to distract us here is a nice reminder from the BBC.

“Arsenal are aiming to win nine successive Premier League matches for the first time since January to March 2004 during their ‘Invincibles’ title-winning season.”  (See below for details).

And I don’t normally include three quotes from one publication, but I must include this one… “In 2024, only Cole Palmer (15 goals, 10 assists) and Erling Haaland (17 goals, one assist) have been directly involved in as many Premier League goals as Kai Havertz (10 goals, seven assists).”

Which is perhaps a little something for those who never wanted Havertz in and still want him out.

Arsenal have four players out of contention for the match – Takehiro Tomiyasu who might return at the end of September, Gabriel Jesus who is out but we don’t know how long for, Kieran Tierney who is injured but could be also back mid-month, and Mikel Merino who has no return date after a shoulder injury.

Brighton have two players out: Solomon March and Matthew O’Riley while Brajan Gruda and Mats Wieffer have injuries that require a late fitness test.

Paddy Power are now giving us more of a rundown on referees than I remember from before and they confirm that the referee is Chris Kavanagh.and the assistants are Lee Betts, Richard West. 

Fourth official is John Busby, VAR make-believe is under Andy Madley. assisted by Steve Meredith.

For the referee preview we are still taking figures from last season, as the referees have not had enough games this season to get meaningful average statistics.

Kavanagh is at the low end of seeing fouls.  Last season on average David Coote saw 14% more fouls per game – and that is across every game, not just one particular match.

But for every 10 tackles that go in, Kavanagh sees just 5.3 fouls, while Tim Robinson sees seven fouls.    So Robnson sees just about a third more of the tackles that he witnesses as fouls, than Kavanagh does.  That is an enormous difference, and is as if the two men are reading different sets of rules.

Thus once again we are seeing huge discrepancies between the ways different referees see different games.