Following the boundless enthusiasm that welcomed the analysis of last weeks referree Gavin Ward, here's second instalment for your delectation and delight!
Just a quick word on Gavin's performance last week. Overall I thought he had a really good match. Two points of note for me were the number of 'soft' free kicks for fouls ( to both sides to be fair ) and of course managing to miss Tatey's rather weak attempt at a throat hold. Overall though not a bad referree.
This week we have Geoff Eltringham, who is a similar character to Gavin Ward. So low numbers of yellow cards per match ( about 3.3 ), very low red cards ( about one every 12 matches ) and penalties about one in 7 matches.
As @Steve was so keen on knowing how often the ref blows his whistle, I've done some research. It's fair to say Geoff is a bit whistle-happy, so he will blow up for lots of fouls. We can expect virtually every tackle to be penalised ( but not carded ). So expect the match to be a little stop-start, I'm expecting about 30 fouls to be penalised this match.
This could actually work in our favour, if we can keep possession and draw the tackles, Geoff will probably penalise them and might eventually lose patience and get a card out.
I hope the team are practicing our free kicks, as that might be our best chance at goals on Saturday.