- Declan Rice on frustration and how referees are influenced by journalists’ reports
- Has there ever been a footballing moment like this?
By Tony Attwood
Looking forward inevitably to Sunday, it is noticeable and of course highly regrettable that as ever the media make little of the influence that the referee might have on the game.
In this case, the referee is going to be Anthony Taylor, and if you are a regular reader of Untold, you will know that prior to each game we do report on referees and their results. We know for example, that the percentage of matches that referees in the Premier League see as home wins ranges from 70% down to 30% – depending on which referee you get.
And we know that the number of away wins that PL referees have ranges from 52.6% to 18.2%.
So yes, to reiterate, it really does matter which referee a club gets, and it is quite possible for gamblers to see these percentages and make money out of results that are unexpected when we look at league form, but quite common when we trace that particular referee’s history. Indeed, I suspect it was the discovery and publicity of such statistics that hastened the demise of the old football pools, which for many a long year dominated pre-match gambling talk. They still exist, the football pools, but on a much smaller level; these days, now it is known how much influence on the result the ref has.
And so it is rather interesting to see that the Manchester Eveing News is running the article that “Richard Keys lambasts Man City vs Arsenal referee decision as message sent to Howard Webb.” Maybe our revelations about PGMO and its activities in restricting the number of referees is being noted after all.
Unfortunately when it comes to the ManC Ev News, one does have to plough through an awful lot of repetition and advertisements in order to get anywhere near a reason why there might be an objection to this referee, but eventually we find it with the statement that “Keys has specifically objected to Taylor’s involvement in the match due to him originating from Wythenshawe and residing in Altrincham, merely six miles from Old Trafford.”
We have never done an analysis of whether where referees were born affects their results, and I guess it would be rather dull and boring work, so I think we’ll leave that for others. But I rather suspect the place of birth has nothing much to do with bias, and that story is simply part of the general attempt to discredit our work on ref bias, by showing that one allegation of bias is false, and generalising out from there to all suggestions of bias being false. It is, after all, a very old newspaper trick.
In this case, we’ll compare Tyalor with Brooks. Taylor is the most used referee in the Premier League, having seen 25 league games this season, and goodness knows how many matches in cups and other countries. Brooks has seen 10 and is chosen because he has an interesting contrast of figures….
| Referee | HomeWin% | AwayWin% | Draw% |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anthony Taylor | 48.0% | 32.0% | 20.0% |
| .John Brooks | 70.0% | 10.0% | 20.0% |
| .Jarred Gillett | 15.8% | 52.6% | 31.6% |
| Variation | 54.2% | 42.6% | 11.6% |
You could explain these numbers on pure chance, but that is pushing it quite a bit. A much easier explanation is that referees enter the games with results consciously or subconsciously in mind and edge the match towards these results. But of course they are still dependent on one of the clubs to do the business, and the other to accept that they are never getting anywhere with this ref, which is how it so often seems to go.
So yes, we can be grateful we haven’t got Brooks doing the game. But we might be a bit sad that we have not got Gillett, who just loves to see away wins. But perhaps even more to the point, we might above all, once again note the key issue.
For it is crazy that the percentage of wins in these three different groups should vary so much with home and away wins, but be much more stable with draws.
One other point we must mentioin is that the Guardian has reported that Alex Manninger, who was part of the Double-winning team of 1998, has died in a car accident in Austria. He was 48. Alex Manninger made 64 appearances during his time at Arsenal, and we remember him particularly from winning the Premier League and the FA Cup in 1998, and do send our thoughts and condolences to his family.
John Brooks happens to be the VAR official instead!
We will need to put in the performance of the season to get those 3 points v. a home ref and VAR official plus the biggest cheats ever known in football history alongside banana Silva who normally gets away with all his play acting and snidey ways.
On that last point what really winds me up is the thought that should we decide to do the same we would be seeing all manner of coloured cards coming our way.