Untold Ref Review: Manchester City 2 – 0 Bolton Wanderers

Today’s referee is Mark Clattenburg –

MATCH REVIEW DETAILS – Mark Clattenburg (2012-03-03)
Period 1
Min Type Foul from On C/NC Comment Weight
3 OTHER Kompany Ngog C push 1
14 OTHER Reo Coker Nasri NC Was a push in the back not given 1
17 OTHER Reo Coker Pizarro C Tackle from behind 1
17 YELLOW Reo Coker C Ref gives a warning to stop it, could have been a yellow but only the second foul given after 17 minutes can be done 2
22 OFFSIDE MC C assumed correct 1
24 GOAL MC C Correct goal – own goal 3
28 OTHER Pratley Pizarro C trip 1
35 OTHER Clichy Davies C came from behind 1
40 PENALTY Knight Balotelli C Knight holds the arm of Balotelli who goes down. But Balotelli was also holding the shirt of Knight. Both players made a foul so the ref decides to ignore both fouls. Great decision! 3
40 OTHER Clichy Davies C trip 1
42 OTHER Toure Ryo C pulled him, ref waited to see if there was an advantage and then came back to the foul 1
43 OTHER Balotelli Reo Coker C little kick 1
Period 2
Min Type Foul from On C/NC Comment Weight
50 PENALTY Knight Balotelli C It looked like a push but both angles shown on replay are not 100% conclusive. It could have been that Balotelli was again holding the shirt of Knight so he again let it go. So stick with the ref 3
52 OTHER Ream Balotelli C Trip 1
53 OFFSIDE MC C Assumed correct 1
55 OTHER Pizarro Ngog C pulled him back 1
56 YELLOW Pizarro NC Pizarro lost the ball on the midcircle and Ngog could have been on a one on one with Kompany, so stopping a promising attack 2
57 OTHER Reo Coker Balotelli C high foot 1
58 OTHER Pratley Pizarro C Trip 1
63 OTHER Lescot Ngog C push 1
64 OTHER Pratley Toure C pulled him back 1
65 OTHER Ngog Clichy C Assumed correct 1
66 OTHER Nasri Rickets C high foot 1
69 GOAL MC C correct goal 3
72 OTHER Toure Ryo C trip signalled by the assistant 1
76 OTHER Knight Dzeko C Trip 1
84 OTHER Pratley Toure C pulled him back but could get away and the field was opening up, ref gave advantage 1
84 OTHER Kompany Ngog C Assumed correct 1
91 OTHER NC Corner for City not given 1
92 OTHER Barry Ngog C Little trip 1

A few incidents that make the difference between a good ref could be seen in this game.  There were two penalty decisions both between Balotelli and Knight. The first one was clear and thanks to a great position from the ref he could see that Balotelli maybe was fouled but he was also holding the defender by this shirt. So both players making a foul and the ref just waved them away and let the game continue.  A great spot from the referee.

Early in the second half almost the same situation. This time Knight pushed Balotelli. But I had the impression that again Balotelli was holding the shirt of Knight who then pushed him away. The angles from the replays covered up the possible Balotelli shirt tugging but again I thought the ref had a great position and was looking from a good angle to see what happened and he let it all go.

COMPETENCY SUMMARY – Mark Clattenburg (2012-03-03)
Period 1 Called Total Correct %
GOAL 1 1 100.00
OFFSIDE 1 1 100.00
OTHER 7 8 87.50
PENALTY 1 1 100.00
YELLOW 1 1 100.00
TOTAL 11 12 91.67
WEIGHTED 16 17 94.12
Period 2 Called Total Correct %
GOAL 1 1 100.00
OFFSIDE 1 1 100.00
OTHER 13 14 92.86
PENALTY 1 1 100.00
YELLOW 0 1 0.00
TOTAL 16 18 88.89
WEIGHTED 20 22 90.91
Totals Called Total Correct %
GOAL 2 2 100.00
OFFSIDE 2 2 100.00
OTHER 20 22 90.91
PENALTY 2 2 100.00
YELLOW 1 2 50.00
TOTAL 27 30 90.00
WEIGHTED 36 39 92.31

An overall score of 90%! A great game for the ref. He could have given and probably should have given a yellow card be it against Reo-Coker or Pizarro but he was so in control in this game that he could do it with some talking to.  Could we see any bias in this game?

BIAS SUMMARY – Mark Clattenburg (2012-03-03)
Period 1 Manchester City % Bolton Wanderers % Total
Correct For 3 27.27 8 72.73 11
Correct For Weighted 5 31.25 11 68.75 16
Incorrect Against 1 100.00 0 0.00 1
Incorrect Against Weighted 1 100.00 0 0.00 1
Fouls Commited 7 63.64 4 36.36 11
Fouls Penalised 7 100.00 3 75.00 10
Period 2 Manchester City % Bolton Wanderers % Total
Correct For 8 50.00 8 50.00 16
Correct For Weighted 10 50.00 10 50.00 20
Incorrect Against 1 50.00 1 50.00 2
Incorrect Against Weighted 1 33.33 2 66.67 3
Fouls Commited 7 50.00 7 50.00 14
Fouls Penalised 7 100.00 7 100.00 14
Totals Manchester City % Bolton Wanderers % Total
Correct For 11 40.74 16 59.26 27
Correct For Weighted 15 41.67 21 58.33 36
Incorrect Against 2 66.67 1 33.33 3
Incorrect Against Weighted 2 50.00 2 50.00 4
Fouls Commited 14 56.00 11 44.00 25
Fouls Penalised 14 100.00 10 90.91 24

Only 3 wrong calls. Yes only 3! And as nice as you can split them between the teams as possible. So a high quality performance from what could be the best ref in the EPL for years to come.  Great movement, great placement, good eye for the fouls and brave enough to not choose the easy way out with the penalty shouts. I liked it.

17 Replies to “Untold Ref Review: Manchester City 2 – 0 Bolton Wanderers”

  1. Thanks for an excellent review. Is Clattenburg too fair a ref to be allowed to ref us 6 times a season?

  2. @ Donnyfan1 Re Clattenburg

    I have stated many times that i think he is is my favourite Ref , Oliver is also developing into a very good Ref. Dowd is surprising us all and probably will end up being the outstanding performer in the league this season.

    But yes for me Clattenburg every time, and i think you are right, he has too much integrity for those who like to run “the show” so he is kept out of the way.

  3. @donnyfan have been asking myself the same question and its not only our games but he is also being kept away from all big matches..either he has angered someone or he has far too much integrity to ref those and thats why they are reserved to Dean,Webb and Dowd(we all know how bent he can be eventhough he is great this season)

  4. @reviewers

    The feeling I am getting is that the reviewers are annoyed with me. I am not trying to be a problem, I am looking to clarify things. And I can entirely appreciate what effort you are going to, as I am trying to combine your data with other data and give it back to UA at some point (hopefully soon).

    In any event, 15574 Arsenal 2 – Sunderland 1. Song’s YELLOW at 56 minutes. The game in terms of entries in your review is dominated by Sunderland fouling Arsenal. I don’t see the reasoning as to why Song needs to be booked, even if similar fouls have been committed by Sunderland and players booked. If the reason(s) Sunderland was booked was reckless AND persistent, and along comes Song’s foul which is not persistant, there was never any need to give Song a YELLOW.

    The problem it would seem is that the referee may not have given enough reason for the bookings in the previous Sunderland bookings.

    If my guessing describes the situation, do you have a justification for Song’s YELLOW? My guess is that his YELLOW is not correct, regardless of the last N YELLOWs given to Sunderland.

  5. @Gord

    I get the feeling it may have been harsh, but it was a judgment call and it was a trip from behind by Song.

    Considering that the opposing team had 2 players booked for fouls from behind in the previous 5 minutes, it’s kind of hard to argue that the ref was wrong to book Song even if the Sunderland players’ fouls were intentional or a bit reckless compared to Song’s foul which was more careless if I remember correctly. It was still a trip from behind.

  6. @Ref Reviewer 03

    Thanks. Trips from behind tend to be one of the things which results in cruciate ligament damage, which is one of the leading causes of players retiring due to injury. Or, that is how I remember the stats on this quite a while ago.

    @DogFace

    Any chance you are seeing this? 15675 Marseille 0 – Arsenal 1

    Lots of people reported problems with the formatting.

    When I go to re-enter the data, I bring the page up in SeaMonkey Composer, and edit out a bunch of stuff. I can see the “table” is too wide, but after editing the stuff I normally edit out, and saving it, I can’t seem to do anything to the table to make the Comment column narrower (which seems to be everyone’s problem). I have a Perl script which along with Dave Ragett’s Tidy program (from W3C) will produce clean XHTML from most HTML. Well, I ran this script against that file, and the resulting output has no table in it. Everything is a paragraph (in a text editor). Pulling it into a browser, this clean XHTML is even less friendly and readable than than the HTML.

    I’ve seen you write in reviews about fixing formatting for Walter, and I’ve never gone looking for what it is you do. But whatever you do, it must be powerful stuff. I’m guessing it is changes to CSS?

    Happy Easter.

  7. @DogFace

    getting rid of the nowrap=”nowrap” attribute seems to fix the formatting.

  8. @reviewers

    In my retranscription, I am adding the odd optional flag here and there. You aren’t geeks, I am adding variables which can indicate something unusual.

    Some of your entries are in bold, and some aren’t. In at least one occasion, I’ve tagged something as being “noteworthy”. I can pick another name without much problem. What is it you are trying to indicate by putting lines in bold?

  9. @reviewers 15675 Marseille 0 Arsenal 1

    At 15 minutes we have the comment “Nothing given the ref was running behind them so should have had it correct”. I gather this was an incorrect decision that was not called (no whistle blown) and hence points=0 and weight=0.

  10. @Gord
    Bold text is used by the reviewer to emphasize key events – goals, bookings, penalties, etc. as well as key decisions.

    I didn’t review the Marseille game, but perhaps there is an error in that the reviewer marked that call at 15 minutes as correct when he meant to mark it incorrect.

  11. @Ref Reviewer 03

    Okay, I need to go back and add a flag to data, to indicate key events. In folding in better time data, I need to revisit every file anyway. Adding more data then isn’t that difficult.

    I have seen few errors in the reviews. As I mentioned elsewhere on Untold, I think I’ve only seen a handful of errors in 1400 entries. You guys are being exceptionally good at entering data.

  12. @Gord

    I don’t know if it’s necessary to go back and flag data. I think we bold text data mostly to make it easier for the reader to see key events when the review is posted online. Maybe Walter can give his view on this.

  13. Gord,

    I think if I remember correct that I doubted the decision but as the ref was close and I could not have conclusive evidence that he got it wrong I gave him the decision and marked it as a correct one.

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