Ref Review 2012/13: Chelsea

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.

__________________________

After having dealt with the different teams and after having examined all the refs and this leading to the best ref of the season according to the views of our referee reviewers we now will bring you something that will be an easy manual to see who is good or bad for a team.

We will of course bring you this in order so that from now on if you see that your team will play 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 possible returning things.

As of course it might 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. If a ref of course 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 you will see. The ultimate referee performance would be that the bias score (which is based on the wrong decisions) is 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. The bias number for that ref.

On the other hand if the ref had a negative bias you will see again a name but then with a red line and a number. The negative bias score for that ref.

The longer the lines are means the higher the number and the higher that bias has been from the ref. Short lines are better and would be nicer for all. I also included a little table in the graphic just with the names and with a red or green label. This is for those who want to throw a quick look at the names as sometimes the numbers did get in the way with the name.

Next in our series is Chelsea

Chelsea bias per ref

 

When we look at the graphic we see a lot of red.  7 refs with a negative bias.  And 5 refs with a positive bias.

Best ref from a neutral point of view was Lee Mason who had no bias score at all in the games we reviewed of him with Chelsea. That is the way it should be.

We have two refs with a rather small positive bias for Chelsea:  Swarbrick and Jones.  Dowd and Marinner already with a bigger positive bias. But top of the list is Martin Atkinson. I don’t think this will come to a surprise to people who follow football and the referees a bit.

From the refs with a negative bias we notice that Webb was a ref with only a small negative bias against Chelsea.  This might come as a surprise for some Chelsea fans. And also the low negative score from Clattenburg is not what was expected from the Chelsea fans I can imagine. The infamous Chelsea – MU match in mind. But I can assure them that Clattenburg just had one of his worst games of his career that day and also messed a few things up against Manchester United that day.

Mike Dean and Foy with a negative bias but not out of order. But the negative bias from Oliver and Taylor is too high.

Now let us see if we can find some patterns if we compare this with the numbers from the season before.

 

EPL vs PGMOL - Incorrect calls Breakdown by Referee - Chelsea (Weighted) 2011/2012

In that season we see that Clattenburg had a zero bias score.  So I don’t think he really has anything against Chelsea in particular.

Foy is a highly negative ref for Chelsea it seems.  And the same can be said of Oliver.

On the positive side of things we see that Marinner had a rather high positive bias in both seasons for Chelsea.  Jones also had a positive bias in both seasons. Mason had a big positive bias the season before but the last season was more balanced. It gives the impression that he doesn’t have anything against Chelsea but can have his bad day.