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By Tony Attwood
“Manchester City fan criticizes referee’s performance” is hardly a novelty headline, but it is of interest becaquse go back a while to the days when ManC won everything referees comments were harder to find.”
One of the problem with criticising referees is that because there is so much of it, and because most fans blame referees at some time or another, it becomes a consistent backdrop to matches week after week.
Worse, there is no mechanism for dealing with the situation. The match haqppens, fans complain, nothing happens about the complaints, we move forward, the next match happens, and so on..
Thus we now get, “Viewers to the Sunday afternoon football match between Manchester City and Bournemouth were treated to a display of refereeing bias so great that even the Sky commentator could not believe it. Basically the Bournemouth player was pushed around all over the place by the ManC defenders and yet the referee did nothing at all. Eventually the Manc team managed to get the ball up the other end and knowing justs how much the referee was working in their favour, they scored.”
But we all know that Manchester City fans will disagree, PGMO will do nothing, and most of the media will move on as if nothing has happened. There won’t be any special tracking of how one referee’s results have panned out compared with another, how many errors were noted or anything else,
Indeed you might recall that some years ago we analysed referees in terms of how many home wins, away wins and draws each one had.
Take a look at these figures. The figures are taken from last season
| Referee | Games | HomeWin% | AwayWin% | Draw% |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Peter Bankes | 22 | 68.2 | 18.2 | 13.6 |
| John Brooks | 12 | 66.7 | 16.7 | 16.7 |
| Andy Madley | 21 | 33.3 | 47.6 | 19.0 |
| Jarred Gillett | 22 | 22.7 | 45.5 | 31.8 |
| Thomas Bramall | 22 | 40.9 | 18.2 | 40.9 |
| Samuel Barrott | 24 | 37.5 | 25.0 | 37.5 |
The data comes from Who Scored’s analysis of Premier League referee performances last year, and you can see from this extract, as I have shown many times before that you can make a good guess as to the type of result you might get according to which referee is in charge.
If the team you support has got Bankes or Brooks as a referee and they are at home, you can see just how likely it it there is going to be a home win. The chances of a draw are small. But if you have Bramall or Barrott the chances of a draw rise dramatically.
Now of course I am not saying that these referees go onto the pitch thinking “I am going to have a draw today” or anything like that, but the figures really should not be as biased as they are. How can one referee see over two thirds of his games as home wins and another see one third of his games as home wins. Unless…
Unless of course the PGMO are choosing referees for games because they are seeking to influence results. Now I may no allegation that this is true, rather I point out that it is one explanation of the facts revealed by last seasons results. If you wanted to influence who won the league and were in a position to select the referees for each match, you could have a major impact on events. And that is no right.
But what is interesting is that footballers and managers can make comments if they want to. Consider the recent headline, “Footballers join backlash against Infantino: ‘Enough is enough’” also recently in the Telegraph. So that can be said, but comments on referees? No absolutely forbidden. And herein we have our problem. Everyone is either afraid to speak or forbidden from speaking out
But I would like to finish with two contrasting commentaries. The first from the Sun. “ARSENAL are readying a £130million bid for Atletico Madrid striker Julian Alvarez, according to reports.” And this one is from the Guardian…
“Álvarez walked alone. Head down in silence, as he had been all afternoon and beyond, he set off slowly across the pitch accompanied only by his thoughts and the whistles that followed him. Not offered a hand to shake or a nod of acknowledgment, he stepped past the Atlético badge on the touchline where the mouth of the tunnel opens. Either side, supporters hung over the void, whistling and shouting. Way off to his left, Atlético’s other players paused, seemingly waiting for him to slip out of sight before approaching the stand, but none turned back.”
Should we sign him? Is it worth the risk?
