Untold Ref Review: Chelsea 1 – 0 Sunderland. Another giant step forward for mankind

Posted on by DogFace

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Today’s referee is Phil Dowd and on this side  of the fence we had  ref reviewer 04.

And in our continuing quest for the Holy Grail (= a higher standard in refereeing) we adapted our model a bit thanks to the combined forces of refwatcher DogFace and myself. So what you are about to read is the new version of how we will try to present our ref reviews.

You will miss the column with the points. Because in fact this was the same as was in the column C/NC.  At the bottom we tried to present the data of the two teams next to each other and on the same line in the hope it is more clear compared to the last models we used. So hope you enjoy the new model.

MATCH REVIEW DETAILS – Phil Dowd (2012-01-14)
Period 1
Min Type Foul from On C/NC Comment Weight
5 OTHER Bendtner Cole C Trip 1
8 OTHER Luiz Bendtner C Trip 1
8 YELLOW Luiz C Came late, promising attack 2
13 GOAL Chelsea C Correct goal 3
15 OTHER Romeu Bardsley C Push 1
18 OTHER NC Throw to Sunderland given to Chelsea 1
19 OTHER Torres Vaughan C Trip 1
22 OTHER Cattermole Lampard C Push 1
26 OTHER Sun? Romeu NC Stopped him with the arm, not given 1
26 OTHER Vaughan Luiz C Trip 1
27 OTHER Lampard Bardsley C Two fouls in a row 1
40 OTHER Bosingwa C Handball signalled by the assistant 1
41 OTHER Bardlsey Torrest C Obstruction 1
42 OTHER C Kilgallon gets injured after landing bad, refs sees something is wrong and stops play immediately 0
46 OTHER Romeu O’Shea C Little kick 1
47 OTHER Bendtner Romeu C Push 1
Period 2
Min Type Foul from On C/NC Comment Weight
46 OTHER Bosingwa Bendtner C 1
50 OTHER Bosingwa Richardson C 1
52 OTHER Sun, Mata NC Late challenge not given 1
58 PENALTY O’shea Torres NC Trip 3
58 PENALTY Cole Bendtner NC Jumped in his back 3
58 OTHER Cattermole Lampard C Trip 1
58 YELLOW Cattermole C Commits a foul and starts protesting the not given penalty. Correct booking 2
60 OTHER Romeu Sessegnon C Advantage given, schot just wide 1
61 OTHER Terry Sessegnon C Trip 1
65 OTHER Cattermole Lampard C Not visible 1
66 PENALTY Bardsley Torres NC Bardsley hits Torres on the knee when he goes past him 3
67 YELLOW Torres NC Not correct, there was contact 2
69 OFFSIDE Chelsea C Just offside 1
71 OTHER Turner Ramirez C Trip 1
71 YELLOW Turner NC Came late, right on the ankle, yellow card should have been given 2
73 OTHER Meireles Larsson C Trip 1
73 YELLOW Meireles C correct but not consistent with the incident one minute earlier 2
76 OTHER Cattermole Mereiles C Trip 1
76 OTHER Sun? Mata C Push but advantage given 1
80 OFFSIDE Chelsea NC Not correct 1
90 OTHER Sun? Torres C Holding but advantage given, shot saved 1

A NC is a Not Correct decision and in the old model we had it also marked with a 0 (zero). A C is a Correct decision and previously marked with a 1.  We left that column out but did leave the weight score in it so you can see how much weight the decision had.

In the table below you can see how he did in each half. And in the first table we can see if the ref was competent or not. By this we mean if the ref managed to get the decisions correct when we look at the laws of the game.

COMPETENCY SUMMARY – Phil Dowd (2012-01-14)
Period 1 Called Total Correct %
GOAL 1 1 100.00
OTHER 12 14 85.71
YELLOW 1 1 100.00
TOTAL 14 16 87.50
WEIGHTED 15 17 88.24
Period 2 Called Total Correct %
OFFSIDE 1 2 50.00
OTHER 11 12 91.67
PENALTY 0 3 0.00
YELLOW 2 4 50.00
TOTAL 14 21 66.67
WEIGHTED 16 31 51.61
Totals Called Total Correct %
GOAL 1 1 100.00
OFFSIDE 1 2 50.00
OTHER 23 26 88.46
PENALTY 0 3 0.00
YELLOW 3 5 60.00
TOTAL 28 37 75.68
WEIGHTED 31 48 64.58

And blimey what a difference a half makes. The first half was of high quality. The ref got most of the decisions correct. But in the second half he suddenly lost it. Making many mistakes. He refused to give a penalty and there was 3 penalties he should have given. Then the points drop a lot of course because a penalty is a high weighted decision. His yellow cards also were not according to how it had to be done. A bit inconsistent at times. Could it be that he was getting tired in the second half?

So his total foul calling over the full 90 minutes was still acceptable but if we look at the weight of his decisions it was below the Holy 70% marker.

But was there a team benefitting from the mistakes? Well we try to show you this in the next table. The Bias summary table. And again we can show you this for each period and for the whole game.

BIAS SUMMARY – Phil Dowd (2012-01-14)
Period 1 Chelsea % Sunderland % Total
Correct For 6 46.15 7 53.85 13
Correct For Weighted 8 50.00 8 50.00 16
Incorrect Against 1 50.00 1 50.00 2
Incorrect Against Weighted 1 50.00 1 50.00 2
Fouls Commited 6 50.00 6 50.00 12
Fouls Penalised 6 100.00 5 83.33 11
Period 2 Chelsea % Sunderland % Total
Correct For 7 50.00 7 50.00 14
Correct For Weighted 8 50.00 8 50.00 16
Incorrect Against 6 85.71 1 14.29 7
Incorrect Against Weighted 12 80.00 3 20.00 15
Fouls Commited 7 43.75 9 56.25 16
Fouls Penalised 6 85.71 6 66.67 12
Totals Chelsea % Sunderland % Total
Correct For 13 48.15 14 51.85 27
Correct For Weighted 16 50.00 16 50.00 32
Incorrect Against 7 77.78 2 22.22 9
Incorrect Against Weighted 13 76.47 4 23.53 17
Fouls Commited 13 46.43 15 53.57 28
Fouls Penalised 12 92.31 11 73.33 23

And so we can see that when it came to correct calls he was very fair for both teams during the whole game. But when it came to the wrong calls their was a very big difference. When he made a mistake it was almost always in favour of Sunderland. You can see that he made a total of 9 mistakes and all but two were against Chelsea. Chelsea who was the home team and this adds even more question marks to this number.

With last seasons games Sunderland-Arsenal, Newcastle-Arsenal and this game in mind I really wonder if I am seeing an obvious North-South bias in this ref?  Anyway I will leave it up to you in the comment section to give your own opinion on the new model and on the ref.

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28 Replies to “Untold Ref Review: Chelsea 1 – 0 Sunderland. Another giant step forward for mankind”

  1. Ahhh… the new format is so pretty. But perhaps I’m biased? 😀

    Also – Dowd just scraped past 50% in the weighted competency in the second half – he could have made his calls on the flip of a coin and come up with something similar, shocker!

  2. Thanks Dogface. Finally we are getting somewhere 😉

    And there might be even more things around the corner…. but lets just do it step by step…

  4. Walter, Dogface, Ref Reviewers,
    Beoootiful format. Last tweak: How about adding the DATE of the match in the top banner in title case – ex: January 29, 2012 – next to MATCH REVIEW DETAILS ? Or anywhere – such as in the first sentence. Chronology matters and makes it easier on readers to slot the match and think about its exact proximity to our last game and what the ref is up to. It’s obviously simple, so why not that extral bit of clarity? Dogface? Walter?

  5. @Bob Good idea – I reckon the match date should be part of the title… as that is sometimes what people search on google so it could only draw more relevent traffic? Also – I think the referee name should be at the top of all datasets e.g. “MATCH REVIEW DETAILS – RefName – MatchDate/Time”

    One final tweak is that maybe we could make the big 3 point calls bold or something so they stick out?

    I will have a look now at a couple of things.

  6. Despite beeing an regular reader of this website this is the first time I have commented on it. Great work! One thing though… The WC (wrong call) count shold be 7-2 in the Che-Sund match according to the review. Calls against Sunderland: Wrongly given throw and not given penalty on Bendtner. Just wanted to make You aware of if…:-) Keep up the good work…!

  7. @Arseboy70 – thanks, I’m glad you found the format so accessible that you could point out data errors!

    Unfortunately I just take a data dump and process it into the tables that you see so Walter – one for you, can you check the calls for/against home/away and see that all is fine?

  8. Arseboy is right.
    I’m off now to spank ref reviewer 04 because he put a 1 in the wrong column.

    Thanks for pointing this out and it seems great that we can spot mistakes like that with the current layout.

    I changed it in the numbers now so in the final numbers when we gather it at the end of the season it should be the correct numbers.

  10. Good ideas Bob. I knew you would come up with some. You have an eye for those things.

    I think Dogface could make things work a bit. I usually takes a few reviews to come up with something final. And the influence of our readers is very big in fact.

  11. I’ve added Bob’s suggestions to the table generation and done an update – what do you think Bob? Sexytime data tables?

  12. Dogface, could it be that you thrown in the wrong ref? I think it is the norwich tottenham ref

  13. OK – all issues fixed and dataset updated – good job I can generate these at the touch of a button as I wiped out the previous one with a different match! *oops*

  14. Now my text is wrong… LOL. Well as long as the numbers are correct.
    Thanks Arseboy and Dogface

    Remind me Dogface to never change to a new format again on transfer deadline day….

  16. No, I still refer in my text to the original numbers that are corrected now. Still Dowd did Chelsea no real favours that is the bottom line.

  19. After all these few changes (that according the comments there have been) IT LOOKS GREAT! Great work.

  20. @Walter & DogFace:

    Love the new format. Love it. I find it much easier to read now. Well done, and thank you for all of the work that you put in to do this.

    Just out of curiosity, how are you coming up with these weighted percentages? If you’ve already explained that somewhere and I overlooked it, please just tell me where. Thanks.

  21. The difference between the weighted and the “normal” decisions is that we give a bit of weight to the decisions. A normal decision=1, a yellow cards get a weight of 2 and a goal/red/penalty gets a weight of 3 points.

  22. Just had a look at the ‘Debatable Decisions’ website. For those who have not seen or heard of it, it’s a site that looks into refereeing decisions made in the English Prem Lge. One thing that I noticed was: EVERY decision that has gone FOR Arsenal during the season was mentioned. However there were a LOT of decisions AGAINST arsenal missing! Of course there is a reason for this… The site claim they uses Match of the Day and other media sources when going through the games. They don’t see the whole game. This again shows how bias the media is… If Arsenal benefit from a decision: Make sure the whole world get to know it. If Arsenal is on the wrong end of one: Brush it under the carpet…!!! Up The ARSENAL!!! Norwegian Gunner 4ever…

  23. @Arseboy70 – yes, I agree, I have looked into the site a while ago and even though they miss loads of stuff that goes against us we are still bottom of their league. The work done on this site is more in-depth. It would be nice to cover all EPL games here – maybe next season eh if we can attract more referee’s!?

  24. @Walter:

    Oh, ok, got it. When I was asking that question, I kind of knew for some reason that the answer was going to turn out to be right in front of my face 🙂 Thanks.

  25. I like the new format, it is much easier to understand. It was evident as I watched that game that in the second half the ref favored Sunderland. Incompetence is not the cause because he did the first half well, fatigue might be the cause in the second half but as it was clearly favoring one team I think bias is a better explanation.

  26. Have you guys seen this post on referee Walton’s record – and does this tally with your findings from your ref reviews?

    “But the last four years of refereeing from Mr Walton are even more revealing.

    Manchester United 11 wins, 4 draws and 0 defeats.
    Manchester City 0 wins, 3 draws and 4 defeats.

    It is this sort of thing that determines titles.

    Either this is just another collection of Incredible Flukes or the PGMOB and Peter Walton have some explaining to do over the bias, and it is a statistically significant bias”

    from here:

    http://footballisfixed.blogspot.com/2012/02/peter-walton-is-red-bastard.html

  27. @Mare St Gooner

    Yes this is correct, and I did note with interest the appointment of Walton for this match.

    Peter Walton Vs Manchester

    BTW – this graph is a matchday out of date so it will look even more polarised once I build in yesterdays figures.

  28. Dogface, thanks for sorting things so I can see the tables again. I like the new format too.

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