in association with NewcastleStats.com

A number of Newcastle players have picked up a reputation for bad behaviour both on and off the pitch. NS has decided to sort this matter out once and for all and find out just who really is a Bad Lad.

All stats are based solely on the Premier League.

Table 1.0: Bad Lads by Card Quantity

Of course, this table can only tell us so much. Alan Shearer and Rob Lee’s appearance record is identical in the Premier League and their yellow card tally is eerily close. Prime nutter, David Batty leads the red card list with 4 sendings off in 83 league appearances.

To get a more accurate picture, however, we’ve decided to assign points to each offence: 1 point for a yellow and 2.5 for a straight red card. The logic behind this is that a player can get sent off for two relatively minor offences in a match and receive 2 points, whereas a player sent off for a red card offence is most likely to have commited a more serious infraction deserving of an additional 0.5 points. Therefore the maximum disciplinary points a player can receive in a match is 3.5: 1 caution (1 point) and 1 straight red card (2.5 points).

Chart 2.0: Bad Lads by Disciplinary Points Per Match

No prizes for guessing that professional hardman David Batty comes out top of the indicipline league with an average of 0.398 points per match. Perhaps more surprising is the poor displinary record of our experienced Australian backup defender Craig Moore who managed to rack up 9 cautions in only 25 appearances. The full breakdown is below:

Some other interesting disciplinary facts:

  • Aaron Hughes made 205 league appearances for the club, yet received only 5 cautions and was never sent off.
  • Kieron Dyer has only 4 league yellows to his name in Newcastle colours… and 2 red cards.
  • Despite his fierce reputation, Duncan Ferguson picked up only a solitary league yellow in 30 appearances.

For fun, I decided to see who is the winner of the old-timers club: those who have played over 150 matches for the club. I’ll give you some clues:

  1. He was a right-back
  2. He made 164 league appearances for the club
  3. When bought, he was the world’s most expensive defender

Any ideas?

That’s it for this week. Please bear in mind our usual disclaimer: *No actual science involved.

Until next week, Keep The Faith. NS

Thanks for joining us this week. If you have a suggestion for Stat Of The Week and would like to see your name up here somewhere, let us know your idea!