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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Having dealt with the different teams and after having examined all the Premier League refs (leading to the best ref of the season according to the views of our referee reviewers) we now bring you an easy guide as to who is good or bad to have as a ref for each individual team.
We will of course bring you this in order so that from now on if you see that your team is playing and there is a certain ref assigned you can see in a blink of an eye if this ref has a bad or a good history with your team. At least in the season 2012/2013. And if all goes well we will even try to add the bias from the season before in to each article. And that way you can see if there are any possible situations that return from one year to the next.
And we do this because it might well be that some referee performances are a one off. But if a ref has the same bias against a team it might show something more. For if a ref has a big bias in favour of a team it also is saying something about that ref.
A little word of explanation about the graphics below. The ultimate referee performance would be that the bias score (which is based on the wrong decisions) of around zero. Alas you will find very few of those scores in the total series. So the zero line will be the middle line of each graphic.
If a ref has positive bias score for the team involved you will see a name (of the ref) and a green line and a number. That is the bias number for that ref.
On the other hand if the ref had a negative bias you will once again see a name but then with a red line and a number. The negative bias score for that ref.
The longer the lines, the higher the number and the higher the bias that ref produces. Short lines are better and would be nicer for us all, if only the world worked that way. I also included a little table in the graphic just with the names and with a red or green label. This is for any readers who want to have a quick look at the names as sometimes the numbers can get in the way.
Next in our series is Newcastle
In this graphic we see 10 different refs and 4 had a positive bias and 6 a negative. Two of those refs on either side could be ignored as their bias was really small. Probert on the negative side and Foy on the positive side.
Other refs with a rather low negative bias were Jones and Webb. And we can even classify Dowd among the refs with a low negative bias against Newcastle. Things can change.
Refs who went out of order in the negative bias were Dean and Mason. Their score is really too high against Newcastle. Or any team.
Refs who had a more positive impact for Newcastle were also present. No real low score but some rather big positive scores from Marinner, Atkinson and Swarbrick.
Let us now see if we can find a pattern when we compare it to the season before.
The season before we had 5 negative refs and 3 positive for Newcastle. A bit in line with last season one could say.
But as there are not a lot of refs coming back over those two seasons we cannot really see any similarities.
And the few refs that are mentioned twice had mixed seasons. Marinner with a positive and a negative bias. Dean also and the same can be said of Foy and Webb also.
So at first sight no real ref that constantly is out to get them or to help them out when needed. Well that is of course in the games we reviewed.
- 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
- 44: The Referee Competency League Table
- 45. The most unbiased referee in the PL
- 46 The best ref of the season 2012/13
The bias team by team
- 47. Wigan and the bias of the refs
- 48. West Ham and the bias of the ref
- 49. WBA and the bias of the ref
- 50. Tottenham Hotspur and the bias of the ref
- 51. Swansea and the bias of the ref
- 52. Sunderland and the bias of the refs
- 53. Stoke: Three unbiased refs
- 54: Southampton, an extraordinary mix
- 55: Reading, which two refs helped them the most?
- 56: QPR – a positive bias especially from one ref.
- 57: Norwich – it mostly balances
