By Walter Broeckx
This article is part of the series of the Referee Review 2013. You can find links to earlier articles on the bottom of this article.
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After having dealt with the different teams and after having examined all the refs we now bring together the scores from all the refs and we will try to find out who was the best ref in the PL.
In this article we will give you a few tables and will order the refs based on their performance scores. Now I know that the PGMOL has something similar. It is called the merit table. Over here we will call it the Referee Decisions table.
We have split it up in to 4 tables. The 4th table is for the next article as in that table we will show who was the best ref taking in account these tables and adding the bias score. As we cannot just judge a ref on his decisions but we also should have refs who have shown less bias in total. Better to have a ref making more mistakes for both teams than a ref who only punishes one team but has a higher score.
But now let us look at the decisions table and first we start with taking all the decisions at the same value.
And I think some people will be surprised when they see the first name in this table. And the second name.
As based on the numbers from our referee reviewers whom I would like to thank for the time, dedication and hard work, the best referee in the 2012/13 when we look at all the decisions was Jonathan Moss. Not that long in the PL, he is relatively low key and that usually is a good thing for a ref. And an impressive score. More than 90% correct decisions in total on all his decisions. Well done Mr. Moss.
In second place and just behind ref Moss we find Kevin Friend. And that also will be a big surprise to most. But the scores are what they are and we can only congratulate him with having also a score above 90%.
And then third place in this table we see the first ‘famous’ ref and Fifa ref Andre Marriner.
Now if we compare this to last season we also had ref Moss in first place with his score but as it was only based on a couple of games we didn’t take him and Swarbrick in to the table.
Last year the top 3 was Phil Dowd, Michael Oliver and Kevin Friend. So Dowd went down to 7th place this season. Oliver went down to 14th place. The only survivor of last years top 3 is Kevin Friend who moves up one place. Andre Marriner came 6th last season so did much better.
Let us now try to see how the table looks when we only take the important decisions.
And the league table roughly looks the same.
The same top 3 with again Jonathan Moss being the best. With a score of 81.75% he is the only one that managed to get more than 80% of his decisions correct. Well done Mr. Moss.
Kevin Friend and Marriner complete the top 3 once again. Last years top 3 was Dowd, Friend and Oliver in the important decisions.
A ref who has improved in this table compared to the first table is Clattenburg. His important decisions were better than the place he found himself in the overall decisions.
You can look for your favourite ref in the tables. Or for the ref you hate most. To round off this article I will show you another table in which we will show the difference between all the decisions and the important decisions.
In this table the lower the percentage the better. As that indicates that there is not much difference between making calls in general and making calls that are more important.
And in this table we again see Mr. Moss as top of the list. And that truly is amazing.
Andre Marriner takes the second place in this table and Kevin Friend drops to third in this table. Mark Clattenburg, our last years winner moves up to 4th place.
Looking at this we have the next table and this will show the competence table of the refs in the PL season 2012/13:
So these are the tables when purely looking at competence in making decisions. But we will of course add other things to this and in the next article we can say that Jonathan Moss was the most competent ref in the PL.
In second place we find Kevin Friend. And in third place we find Andre Marriner.
Now in a way this could be compared to the PGMOL merit table. And I know that some of the names at the bottom of our table are rather similar to what the PGMOL has found. And some names returning there each season. Both in the Ref Decisions and the PGMOL table. And yet these refs stay in the PL. Really strange.
But more about that in the final article when we will add the bias weight to the competency numbers. And then we will announce what for Referee decisions was the best ref of the season 2012/13.
And for those who think that the winner is already a certainty I must warn you that the bias numbers can completely change the final table. After all we don’t only want competent refs but we also want refs who show a low bias for most of the teams. And we want to punish them when they have a big bias against teams.
So it will be interesting to see what happens when we combine the competence and the bias numbers.
- 1. Who reviewed the games
- 2. What we did and what next
- 3. All the decisions in numbers
- 4. The first, at times astonishing, numbers
- 5. Home and away bias
- 6. It all evens out in the end – Wigan last season
- 7. West Ham: Life with a positive bias
- 8. West Brom and the Referees
- 9. Tottenham, penalties and some amusing comments
- 10. Swansea City and a change this year
- 11. Sunderland, a positive bias
- 12. Stoke, where refereeing is different.
- 13. Southampton – how did they ever survive?
- 14. QPR – a strange case
- 15. Norwich – more errors than acceptable
- 16. Newcastle United – again, more errors than there should be.
- 17. Manchester United: 70% of wrong decisions in their favour.
- 18. Manchester City: unlike their neighbours a very small bias.
- 19: Liverpool: you should blame the refs
- 20: Fulham – it all evens out in the end
- 21: Everton: a slight bias in favour
- 22: Chelsea: an occasional bias against
- 23: Aston Villa: a huge bias in favour
- 24: Refs give opposition freedom to kick Arsenal off the park.
- 25. The complete league bias table
- 26. Untold has said it for a long while, others follow
- 27. Andre Marriner; a good ref but 10% of his goal decisions are wrong!
- 28: Anthony Taylor: Disastrous when it comes to penalties
- 29. Chris Foy: Very bad on cards and fouls
- 30. Howard Webb, an amazing score
- 31: Jonathon Moss: Over 90% right.
- 32: Lee Mason, the ref with penalty area fever
- 33: Kevin Friend: the red card disaster
- 34: Lee Probert: This is not acceptable
- 35: Mark Clattenburg: good on red, poor on yellow
- 36: Mark Halsey: under half his penalty decisions were correct
- 37: Martin Atkinson. This is not a Fifa ref
- 38: Michael Jones: Poor discipline
- 39: Michael Oliver: This doesn’t look too clever
- 40: Mike Dean – an unacceptable bias.
- 41: Neil Swarbrick. Every goal right but oh the bias
- 42: Phil Dowd: After a good year, a year in decline
- 43: Roger East a short term solution
Intriguing and yet – somehow, delicious.
Thanks. I have to wait for the next instalment.
I don’t think you can have 163.5 per cent since it is out of a hundred? I think maybe you need to divide by two?
Archwaygunner,
I also noticed it. I somehow forgot to remove the % at the end.
My program did this automatic as it was all % I was adding..
It should be interpreted as a total score in fact
Well done mr moss pending the bias tables. Must say this list looks very different to the Halsey list of top refs
@other data
I was looking for historical data, and happened across an irish page which redisplayed data by a Dutch website. There are two sets of data: about 1 million games across Europe going back to 1901, and a much lower number of games across the top two leagues in European countries going back to 2000.
I also ran across apiece of trivia which has nothing to do with Arsenal, but might be of interest. Which means 2 URLs, and someone needing to approve publication.
http://balls.ie/football/whats-the-most-frequent-scoreline-in-football-history/
Europe 1901-2012
1-1 11% 11%
1-0 10% 21%
2-1 8% 29%
0-0 8% 37%
2-0 8% 45%
0-1 7% 52%
1-2 6% 58%
2-2 5% 63%
3-0 4% 67%
3-1 4% 71%
0-2 4% 75%
1-3 3% 78%
3-2 2% 80%
0-3 2% 82%
4-0 2% 84%
4-1 2% 86%
2-3 2% 88%
remainder (133) 10% 98%
A summary not present in the original presentation shows that the home team wins 40% of games, the visiting team wins 24% of games and a draw also occurs 24% of the time. One or both of the goaltenders gets a clean sheet 45% of the time.
Top 2 Leagues in Europe 2000-2012
1-1 11% 11%
1-0 11% 22%
2-1 9% 31%
0-0 8% 39%
2-0 8% 47%
0-1 7% 55%
1-2 6% 61%
2-2 5% 66%
3-0 5% 71%
3-1 5% 76%
0-2 4% 80%
1-3 2% 82%
3-2 2% 84%
0-3 2% 86%
4-0 2% 88%
4-1 2% 90%
2-3 2% 92%
remainder (96) 9% 101%
A summary not present in the original presentation shows that the home team wins 43% of games, the visiting team wins 23% of games and a draw also occurs 23% of the time. One or both of the goaltenders gets a clean sheet 47% of the time.
The two sets of statistics are quite similar, it would be interesting to see how the EPL/England compares to them. In total, ignoring Arsenal, ignoring ManU, just Arsenal, just ManU and so on. If nothing else, some of those game scores in the two remainders, come from EPL/England, and some involve Arsenal.
The trivia. I ran across a page about this history of football in the Falklands. No mention of Arsenal or Gunners in the page, but they do have a team that goes by Hotspur.
http://www.fifl.co.fk/history.html
Top quality, Walter, a very interesting read. You have me on the edge of my seat! Who will be victorious? What will the bias numbers show? Oh, I can’t wait for the next article!
So, Mark Clattenburg had a bad year and still managed top 5. I’d say not bad for someone that endured a serious shake-up for the wrong reasons.
I find even more surprising the position of Lee Mason and, to a certain extent, Anthony Taylor. But maybe the bias table will fix that;)
Well done, mr Moss. Is he a FIFA ref by the way, he deserves it.