REFEREE REVIEW 2012: Kevin Friend

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This article is part of the series : REFEREE REVIEW 2012

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By DogFace and Walter Broeckx

Untold Arsenal has a team of qualified referees who have reviewed more than 40% of the EPL games from last season. The reviews themselves were based on full match video footage with the advantage of video technology features such as slow motion and pause.

By reviewing those 155 games we have made a database of more than 7000 decisions that have been judged by our panel of dedicated and qualified referees.

The numbers you will see are based on those decisions and those reviewed games.

Next in our series is referee Kevin Friend.

Kevin Friend

We have reviewed 7 of his games last season and that was 35% of his total games in the PL.

Not a bad number I would say. People who want us to do more next season should get us some referees to join our reviewing team as soon as possible. We will welcome them with open arms.

Let us have a look at his numbers and we start as usual with the overall competency of this ref.

And those are fine numbers. We know by now that the minimum % you should get in other countries is 70% correct decisions. Wit a score of 78.47 correct decisions in the un-weighted numbers Kevin Friend is well above those numbers.

And if we put weight on the decisions he also goes over that with a very respectable score of 77.51% correct decisions.

So there can be no doubt that he is a referee that belongs in the PL based on those numbers.

Let us have a look at the different numbers on the different decisions we have covered.

The goal decisions were correct with a score of 90.48%. This is almost the league average. I have said it before I would love to get this up to around 99% correct decisions as this is the most important type of decisions. So not that satisfying but still in touch with the league average.

A very disappointing number are the offside decisions. Only 83.87 % correct. Way below the league average we found and miles away from the 99% that Mike Riley promised us. It looks as if he wasn’t lucky with his assistants.

The other decisions are rather good. A score of just under 80% is a great score.  One of the best scores of all the referees I think.

He had only a few penalty decisions to make and by missing one he only got a score of around 67%. Not a really great number but still better than the league average.

In the red cards he dropped a bit. With only 1 correct call in 3 decisions. So not really a good number.

In the yellow cards decisions he did better than the league average. A score of 63.64% correct decisions is not really great but we have learned to live with such numbers so we will not feel dramatic about it. Any more.

Let us have a look if we can see that he had a home bias or not?

Well he sure had a home bias. A rather positive home bias in fact. A score almost twice the normal league average bias for a home team. As a result the away teams had a hard time under his guidance.

And if we put weight on the decisions we see a rise in the numbers. The home bias becomes bigger and the away bias against the visiting team becomes stronger.

One could say that this ref is a home referee if we look at these numbers. If you have him as a ref for your team, better hope and pray you have him at home.

Of course this is something we don’t like at Untold. We don’t like any bias at all so home bias is something we don’t want to see.

This throws a bit of a shadow over his up to know excellent ratings in fact.

Let us have a look at the different teams he did and the bias we can see in those numbers.

Well they sure were no friends of Wolverhampton in their game. If my memory serves me right it was the game Liverpool – Wolverhampton. A game shortly after the Liverpool manager had a chat with Mike Riley head of the PGMOL. He gave Wolverhampton nothing in that game. I wonder what the reason was.  Looking at the other games he doesn’t appear to be overly pro-Liverpool at all. A rather close bias score for them.

We have a few teams with small positive bias numbers. Manchester City comes close to his average.  Everton and certainly Bolton look to be teams that were a bit favoured in the games from Friend.

Let us have a look when we put weight on the decisions.

The score from Wolverhampton goes down a bit dramatically.  He sure made some bad calls against him in that game at Liverpool. Nothing going the Wolverhampton way that day.

Sunderland also a not really positive outcome.

And again Liverpool clearly not his all time favourite team, except that one game one could say.  Because for the rest they end up with a negative bias.

Chelsea and Manchester City are a bit middle of the road for this ref. Fulham are getting a bit of a good treatment.

The scores from Everton and Bolton are very favourable for them but nothing really that goes out of control too much.

FINAL CONCLUSION

Some very decent overall scores from this ref certainly on the general competency score sheet.  Those are excellent numbers. Well above the 70% line so very satisfying for him and for us referee reviewers.

The different type of decisions are also rather good.

A negative remark is his apparent home bias.  Those positive home bias numbers are a bit too high for my liking. It gives the impression that the ref gives in too easily to the home crowd. So that is something he should be taking note and do something about it.

Apart from Wolverhampton and Bolton the team bias numbers were not that big. Those two teams went down so will not have him in the PL this season.

Everton also a big favourable number of calls from this ref. The other teams do rather OK with this ref.

Certainly a ref that will stay in the PL in the next season.

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