The Premier League Refs analysis: Newcastle United

34 Replies to “The Premier League Refs analysis: Newcastle United”

1. Dowd certainly did his bit for Newcastle in the second half of our match at St. James’s Park a couple of years ago.

2. Once again Walter, the same spread as all the other cases apart from Man United, one or two good and bad refs, the rest in the middle.

   But, as I mentioned in the Man U comments, the bad refs have a good average on the draws – Newcastle’s draw average is 26.78%.

   Anthony Taylor – 28.57%, and Lee Probert – 50%.

   If these two refs were really biased, surely their draw average would be well below the club average, but instead they are in Taylor’s case just a little better, and in Probert’s case nearly twice as good as the club average.

   If you added the points average of each ref, rather than ignoring the vital difference a point for a draw brings, you might find these “Dean” type refs aren’t as bad as you make them out to be?

   Certainly someone from the PGMOL would pick up on this in a rebuttal of your conclusions (you would hope).

   Of course if we had more referees in the Prem, as you point out, then all this would be irrelevant, and the PGMOL would not leave themselves open to such criticism.

3. So in fact you say that Dean is really a complete disaster for Arsenal? 😉

   And in fact seeing one team with a totally different outcome…is well…mind blowing.

4. off topic:

   Arsenal has qualified for the 1/2 of the NextGen.

   Arsenal just was the better side and beat CSKA Moscow with 1-0. It should have been a few more goals.
   Gnabry to score the goal after a great 1-2 with Bellerin

   Impressive performance

5. Walter,
   what I’m saying is that statistically there’s not much to conclude on the numbers so far, and even less if you include draw averages in your summations.

   If you were to work on points gained under each individual referee, rather than wins/losses, then a truer picture would be painted I think.

   Come on Walter, you need to explain why you’re not addressing this, I’ve pointed it out three times now.

   I can’t find the Arsenal case study to see if Dean’s draw percentage (and the other refs) are worse or better than average for the club, which would show more/less bias, could you post me the link?

6. Analysing these articles in this series reveals a worrying trend for Arsenal fans; yes while all other sides – bar man utd – have their dean-refs, they do get them once or twice only per season. We have our dean-ref, and we get him the most per season, more than any other ref. Yes, this has been the story the last 2 or 3 seasons. Worrying.

7. By the most I mean at least 5 times a season

8. Al,
   at least you are one who can combine the two tables and the importance of the combination.

9. I don’t get it Walter,

   why do you think there is a conscious conspiracy by the PGMOL and other higher ups in the English game, to hamstring the Arsenal?

   Are they not held up to be the model of fiscal responsibility, do they not have representatives in the corridors of power?

   What is the agenda, what would be the point?

   Stopping City, (or Chelsea less so) I could understand, but the Arsenal, the Bank of England club, the club who have been in the top flight for nearly a hundred years?

   Is it all Man United driven? Are they that connected, are they that clever?

   Why has no one ever blown the whistle on these plots within the game, ever?

   Before you call foul ‘tho, you still haven’t explained why you omit the draws from these case studies – is it because they don’t fit in with your pre-conceived notions of skull-duggery?

   Tin foil hats on, let’s hear the theories.

10. It’s grim up North,

    Why?
    If we would know that it would be simple. But we don’t know until they say why.

    I think it is the unbeaten season.
    That achievement was felt as a humiliation in the MU camp.
    Before our game 50 at OT SAF said it would be a humiliation that Arsenal would make it to 50 in their home.
    We all know what happened. Mike Riley took care we lost the game. In what was a travesty of a referee performance.

    When you then know that this same Riley is the person who does the appointments of refs and makes sure that Dean is send to Arsenal games around 6 times each season.

    But this is a theory.

    The reason why I focused on the wins is that if I would take in the 3 possible results my articles would have a length almost three times as long. And even you would stop reading them. 😉

    But I will take the numbers in to a different format and go to average points per ref in the follow up on this series. But first continue per club and then a summary where we put all in one table.

    Then I will try to give those who like to bet on games an instrument they can use so they can see how the teams do under the same ref. Last time I gave a tip based on those numbers someone told me on twitter he won £900 on one game. It involved Arsenal and Dean.

    And then the points per game per ref table.
    Plenty of stuff to look at in the next weeks. 😉

11. And why nobody came out with it?
    Don’t bite the hand that feeds you…

12. And I think you have said in your post why they don’t like the way we work. Imagine all the clubs working like Arsenal?
    It could make the PL less attractive to sell it to the possible buyers.
    How boring to say : Arsenal plays with a lot of own players from their academy. It’s much more interesting to say: hey look guys Chelsea/Man C/MU broke another transfer record today.

    And you can laugh about it but I have seen a Man City fan on here saying the same thing we have said about Arsenal. But then about city.

    The difference is that we try to find out if there is something wrong.

    Of course like anyone who does research to something that is thought impossible is open to some patronizing comments.

    But I think that will have been how they felt in Italy before they finally discovered the truth how the appointments of refs was the way how league titles were won and lost. But in Italy nobody talks about tin foil hats any more.

13. Thanks for the reply Walter,

    if eventually a fraud on the scale you suggest is being perpetrated over such a long period of time is proven, then the disgrace heaped upon Man United would be catastrophic!

    It would seriously tarnish their reputation globally, and would surely see them stripped of several honours, as the Italian cheats were.

    As a City fan, there would be much ammunition to fire at their fans, but I’m afraid I really don’t wish that to be true aside from some instant gratification – long term, as a resident of Manchester, with a large Roman Catholic family with reds aplenty, it would cause many of my loved ones serious anguish, and I can’t hope for that.

    My Aunties and Uncles are from a generation who grew up with the Busby Babes, and have supported the reds thru thick and thin, they’re also coming to the end of their time on this earth, and they would be devastated if United were corrupt on this scale – I don’t personally see a conspiracy in the statistics, but I regularly yell at the telly when decisions go United’s way, or against City, or any rivals for the title – that just means I get carried away as a biased fan without a cool, objective look at the figures.

    Anyway, I hope you find nothing but fairness, but I’m afraid human nature might conspire otherwise.

14. Its grim oop north,
    I want you to watch this video of united ending our unbeaten run. It’s far from conclusive proof, not even close, but can you watch this and tell me the ref had no agenda?
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mM747L9Wf8M&feature=youtu.be
    Let’s not call say there’s a conspiracy against us, but that we’re recurring victims. This is just one of the many pitch tiltings we’ve had to endure over the years. There have been some very enlightening articles here on Untold that have shed light on our suspicions, if you’re interested. I’m not sure I could convince you that we get a lot of negative treatment, for one reason or another, but I wanted you to see one example of what we’ve had to experience over the years

15. Iniez,

    I don’t need to watch it, I saw it live on TV as my Missus is a United fan, and she always has the matches on, which I keep half an eye on hoping they get stuffed 🙂

    It was an awful decision, but then I’ve seen United on the wrong end of rotten reffing too in truth, which I’ll admit has had me throwing around accusations of foul play, ref in Fergie’s pocket and so on, but we’re trying to put aside all tribal rivalries here, and look only at the statistics, not individual incidents.

    If you go on Redcafe, a United forum, you’ll find them foaming at the mouth over FA conspiracies and referees ganging up on them, with “evidence” to back them up – same on Bluemoon for City fans, all clubs seem to have lots of fans with an axe to grind with the refs!

    Walter, have you done the Arsenal yet in this series? Can I have the link, I’d like to look at the points averages under the refs too, thanks for your efforts too, we wouldn’t even be be discussing this if you didn’t put the work in 🙂

16. been away from technology for a couple of days, but reading all these numbers with interest. Firstly, Newcastle, before reading it, I had in my head a possibly favourable outcome from more refs, a northern giant, noisy stadiums, English manager and all that…but this seems not to be the case. Anthony Taylor – have a feeling we will hear more on him ad this study continues. Back to the Utd game, really think Riley is the problem. Most fans see things with their own eyes, this is all a great attempt at quantifying what we see. Seems the refs who look after the big boys become head of refs in their countries / continents.Riley is completely tainted when it comes to Utd.There could be a lot of things at work here, supporting a club, other bias for a club or against opponents, pressure, bullying, powerful manager and dare I say it xenophobia in some cases. If that Wigan kid who recently clattered the Newcastle player had, in a parallel world been… say a French speaking African playing at Arsenal, would the FA have acted…or shall I say not acted? Similarly, if Rooney or Gerrard had been the victim of that lunge would the outcome have remained the same?
    Think all this provides a very interesting angle on betting

17. It’s grim up North,

    The Arsenal article with attractive headline: http://blog.emiratesstadium.info/archives/27769

18. Its Grim,
    Did you watch the video? I hope so as then you would have seen a series of incidents involving inconsistent refereeing (not just 1 as your reply would suggest)

19. Stuart,
    I disagree. It was consistent in a way. 🙁 All one way of course if you know what I mean.

20. But I agree with the more than one decision. In fact the penalty was just the icing on the cake from a Utd point of view. The climax of bent refereeing. The orgasm of the devil.

21. Iniez was not referring to a decision but a virtuoso performance over the course of the ninety.

22. I just watched the video – it’s ancient history, but it ruined my afternoon – shocking refereeing 🙁

    But we’re talking stats here, cold, hard evidence, not the odd stinker where a ref loses control, on purpose or not.

    United finished our unbeaten home run in the league this season, that sucked, but so did our performance n truth. I think United were prepared to beat the Arsenal up that game, and they did. They can be dirty b’stards when they want to be, and that’s why they beat you in truth (and why they beat City this season – they did what they had to).

    You can’t go from watching a video like that to number crunching – you’re going to skew the results to reflect your feelings of frustration and anger.

23. on the subject of refs, looks like Halsey is in trouble
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/wigan-athletic/9954508/Referee-Mark-Halsey-demoted-to-League-One-over-Callum-McManaman-tackle.html

    In some ways, maybe Halsey is an easy target, and that tackle was shocking – but just wish the PGMOL would be a bit more consistant – eg with refs that did not see things involving teams of a higher profile, the refs who did not see Rooney elbowing a fellow professional

24. Walter,

    thanks for the link to the Arsenal study.

    With regard to draws, the four “bad” refs for the Arsenal show a surprisingly positive trend, compared to the losses/wins.

    The Arsenal draw average is 26.6%

    Dean – 31.1%
    Oliver – 16.6%
    Probert – 37.5%
    Webb – 26.47%

    So Dean and Probert are good for Arsenal draw-wise, Webb is average, and Oliver bad.

    If there was a conscious effort to punish the Arsenal, you would expect all four refs to mirror their loss figures, but they really don’t conform, and the worst of all, Dean, is showing positive bias for the Arsenal. In fact, apart from Probert, Dean is the best ref for the Arsenal draws-wise taking out Friend who has only done 5 games in total.

    So, the two worst refs for losses, are the two best refs for getting draws (and therefore valuable points).

    Oliver is bad for both victories and draws, therefore he is the one who you should be looking at more closely, but statistically he may just be unlucky to oversee poor Arsenal performances by chance, or bent as hell – you decide :;

    So it’s not all cut and dried.

25. http://www.premierleague.com/en-gb/referees/appointments.html?paramSearchContext=MATCH_WEEK&paramMatchWeek=25

    Appointments for the weekend sirs and ladies.

26. Mandy, we have Halsey as our fourth official this Saturday.

27. How can it be inferred that Dean’s draw statistics reflect a favourable position?

    The notorious 2-2 draw at Birmingham City in the Eduardo game and another draw at WHL when he disallowed a clear goal and then sent Eboue off are clear examples which confirm his bias against us.

28. No I don’t understand that either, 1 point gained or 2 points dropped. Bit of a no brainer.

29. It’s Grim,
    Should some of those draws have been wins instead though? If so, I’d see we lost out by having more draws rather than our fair share.

30. Of course these are merely numbers, but they do infer that Dean is not all bad (just had a flashback to a Not the Nine O’Clock News sketch – The devil, is he all bad?? by an earnest clergyman, Rowan Atkinson?).

    How you interpret the stats is a matter of opinion I suppose, indeed is Dean converting wins into draws, or are his games purely negative for the Arsenal by unlucky chance?

    I have been arguing during this series for a comparison by points average, which would include draws, and so be more accurate an indication of how much of an effect an individual ref may have on a team’s success.

    We really need to get to the end of this series to look at all the numbers, and we can also make other deductions such as whether certain refs are intimidated by large crowds and angry Scottish Lords of the realm 🙂

    It would be very useful to have the stats broken down to home and away results, as I theorise many referees are influenced by tens of thousands of angry supporters, despite their best intentions, rather than the conspiracy theories we have which accuse the PGMOL of an organised campaign against certain clubs, and for certain clubs.

    Newly promoted clubs seem to get fewer breaks from refs, possibly because their managers are not likely to even be in their posts the next season, never mind be able to stand up against poor decisions unlike those managers at the top who have plenty of clout within the media – refs do not need to be afraid of upsetting these clubs compared to the bigger clubs

    I’m of the opinion human nature and error is all our referees are guilty of, and I hope the stats reflect that.(always bearing in mind human nature can be fickle, greedy, corrupt, and devious – Italian football is hardly too dissimilar to ours, so I’m prepared to be disappointed by our referees, or some of them).

31. Grim,
    But wouldn’t watching a game that warrants such frustration and anger hint that there could be something amiss? Furthermore, so regularly? Most fans don’t like the refs of their respective leagues, and all teams get hurt by a ref at some point. Which is why I’m not going to try to convince you that we’re special :P. Hopefully Untold will help us find out the truth. I’m eager to be proved right or wrong, I’m the guy after a messy break up that just wants some closure. I just want to know why so many referee mistakes seem to happen in epl games and, in my opinion (for what its worth), mostly in our games.

    Though I must admit, I feel like we used to be more hard done when we were actually competing. Just a thought..

32. One of the things you bring up Grim is the home bias.
    It is found in studies that it does exist. As I also do reviews of games and to exclude even my review being coloured by the reaction of the crowd I usually watch them on mute. No pundit, no match commentator and no crowd can affect me that way.

    Back to the starting point: home bias. Studies show it exists. And in our findings of last season we found that home bias does exist. As in all the games we found that the wrong decisions favoured the home teams in general.

    And despite this we have Mike Riley saying last season: there is no bias at all in the PL. This is sticking his head in the sand in an unbelievable way.

    I think a real leader and certainly a visionary leader should be on the lookout for all things that can have a bad influence on the referees. Home bias is such a thing. So he should acknowledge it and try to do something about it. Making the refs aware of this. Try to work on ways on overcoming this bias.

    But alas… Mike Riley chooses the easy way: deny the problem and then there is no problem. It’s such things that make my blood boil.

33. By the way I hope you don’t mind calling you just “Grim” ? Your full name ‘It’s Grim Oop North” is a nice one but ooooohhh soooooo long to type 😉

34. ” deny the problem and then there is no problem. It’s such things that make my blood boil.
    ..”

    If the “problem” is referee incompetence and inconsistency then sure, that needs to be addressed and ALL CLUBS have legitimate complaints of being wronged not just AFC. And it needs to be addressed with better training, better/more refs, sensible use of technology, perhaps rethinking the retroactive punishment policy etc..and generally more efforts to a) take advantage (like other pro sports have) of the spectacular technological advancements of the age we live in in order to, b) minimize the inherent human element and error that comes with well…humans making split second high pressured judgment decisions.

    If the “problem” is some spectacularly coordinated effort (with no whistle blowers after all these years given the suggested size and intricacies of the coordinated effort) to conspire against Arsenal specifically, because we went unbeaten some years ago and “embarrased” Ferguson (as is put forth around here as a credible theory), then yes, many people will deny that “probelm” exists.

    Your work (well effort really) is admirable, yes I’ve read the sites you redirect many people too, but at the end of the day, they are merely stats and ALL stats can be manipulated to some degree, and there are so many qualitiative components that need to be addressed to properly analyze the supposed effects of referees on results and viewing them simply numerically and as simplistically as you do, such as….the most obvious qualitative measure affecting results……performance.

    Perhaps a cool drink and you’re blood won’t boil as much over a difference of opinion on a supposed problem, a problem that is only narrowly defined as you see fit.