Red and yellow card records

This week our statistician Josh James takes a look at Arsenal's records with red and yellow cards.

Arsenal have picked up the fewest yellow cards in the Premier League this season, and are on course for their lowest seasonal tally under Arsène Wenger.

From 21 league games, Arsenal have accrued just 19 bookings. That's 26 fewer than the league's worst offenders, Stoke City.

At 0.9 cards per game, the Gunners are set to finish the campaign with about 34 yellows at their current rate - the previous lowest for a league season under Wenger was 45, in 2004/05.

On average so far this season, each team has picked up 32.6 Premier League bookings, meaning that for the first time in three years, Arsenal are below the League average.

However, over the years, the Club's yellow card record has generally been good. The Gunners have picked up fewer than the average number of yellow cards in 11 of the 20 complete Premier League campaigns so far.

In the all-time list of Premier League yellow cards, Arsenal are 20th, having received 1.47 cautions per game since 1992/93.

Statistically, Derby County are the worst offenders in the league's history, earning their 538 bookings at a rate of 2.02 every game.

Arsenal's worst Premier League season for picking up cards was 1996/97, when referees flashed 81 yellows and five reds at Gunners players during the 38 games. That was way above the league average of 60 yellows and 2.2 reds that season.

The fewest cards Arsenal have been shown in a Premier League season was 32 in 1993/94. However the league averages were much lower 20 years ago, at just 29.6 per team that season, despite there being 42 games in a campaign.

Laurent Koscielny's red card on Sunday was the 68th Arsenal have received in the Premier League, arriving a rate of one every 11.7 games. That's enough to place them 14th in the all-time list of games per dismissal in Premier League history.

Hull City lead the way in this particular category, with a red card every 8.4 games on average.

Despite not being ever-present in the Premier League, Blackburn have picked up the most red cards (76), followed by Everton (75).

Of the seven ever-present Premier League teams, Aston Villa have had fewest dismissals - just 45 from 794 matches.

Arsenal's 68 red cards came in 66 different matches (the Gunners were twice reduced to nine men) and interestingly the team won more of these 66 games than it lost.

The record for matches in which Arsenal have suffered at least one red card is: P66 W24 D21 L21 F86 A73. What's more, 14 of those wins were by two goals or more.

 Two more players were booked at the weekend - Thomas Vermaelen and Jack Wilshere - yet, perhaps surprisingly, no player in the current squad has more than 14 career Premier League bookings to his name for Arsenal.

Koscielny and Bacary Sagna have the most, followed by Abou Diaby and Vermaelen with 13 each.

They are all some way short of Patrick Vieira, who was shown 72 yellow cards in the league during his Arsenal career. In fact Vieira is top of both the yellow and red card charts for Arsenal, but not in terms of games per card ratios.

Excluding Henri Lansbury and Sebastian Larsson, who each only played three league games for Arsenal (though Larsson was booked in two of them), the player with the highest games to yellow card ratio is John Hartson, who picked up his 16 bookings at a rate of one every 3.31 games. He's followed by Vieira (one every 3.88 matches), Alex Song (3.94), Stefan Schwarz (4.25) and Ian Wright (4.34).

At the other end of the scale, Alan Smith played 75 Premier League games for the Gunners without entering the referee's notebook at all. Next comes Alex Manninger and Glenn Helder (both 39) for most games without a booking. Of the current squad, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain has now played 31 league games without picking up a booking.

Carl Jenkinson has played more Premier League games (19) than any other defender for Arsenal without a yellow card to his name, though he did get sent off once - for two bookable offences in the same game, the red card therefore superseding those yellows.

Overall 104 different Arsenal players have picked up Premier League bookings, while the 68 red cards have gone to 36 different players.

This season players receive suspensions for every five domestic bookings received. However, the first threshold (for five yellows) passed on December 31. The next threshold, for 10 yellows, passes on April 14. Vermaelen, with four yellows in all domestic competitions so far this season, is closest to that mark.

Yellow and red cards were introduced into the English league for the 1976/77 season, and Arsenal historian Andy Kelly tells us the first Gunners player ever to receive a yellow card in an official match was George Armstrong.

Geordie was one of four Arsenal players cautioned in the 3-1 Division One win at Norwich on August 25, 1976 - the other three were Pat Rice, Liam Brady and David O'Leary.

Later that season Brady became the first Gunner to see red during a game at Stoke on March 23, 1977. After 27 minutes, Brady was brought down by Stoke's Steve Waddington as he raced through. According to the Daily Mirror's report of the game, "The Irishman reacted with a savage wrestler-style forearm blow to Waddington's face." Waddington was booked for the original foul, Brady received his marching orders.

Arsenal - who had lost their previous seven league games - held on for a point. David Price had put the visitors ahead on two minutes, only for Stoke to level three minutes later. It finished 1-1.

The use of yellow and red cards was suspended in the English league between 1980/81 and 1987/88 before being re-introduced in 1988.

The most bookings Arsenal have received in a single Premier League game was seven, in a 1-0 defeat to Leeds on November 26, 2000. Dermot Gallagher was the referee that day.

With thanks to Opta and Andy Kelly. Stats correct as at January 15, 2013.

Josh James also provides the stats for the Arsenal Analysis pages of the matchday programme.

To subscribe or buy online, click here.

To get the iPad edition, click here.