Mike Riley: the ref statistics you quote are simply wrong

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This is the fourth in a series of articles exploring what has gone wrong with the organisation of refereeing in the Premier League.   The previous articles in the series are listed at the end.

By Walter Broeckx

The essence of Mike Riley’s defence of the way the association that runs refereeing in the Premier League handles itself is that there is no bias. No bias at all he dared to say. And this is so mystifying for me as a ref that I think it needs investigating.

That the media just takes this for granted and just repeats the message is to be expected of the media who have a lot of money invested in the well-being of the Premier League.  “Never let some clear numbers get in your way,” is their motto.  Just follow the leader and do the propaganda work.

As you will know by now I am not really a “follow the media” person. I do not believe the numbers they give to the public and I don’t accept them just because they are said.

I have shown that  Riley has not been telling the truth when he came out with his “refs get 93% of the important calls correct”.  I have proven that with the numbers in hand and with the more than 110 games reviewed so far, it is around 70% of the important decisions that are correct.

Was it a deliberate lie? Or does he really believe his nonsense numbers? Only he will know.

I have also shown that Riley has not been telling the truth when he came out with his “assistant-referees get +99% of their calls correct”. Well maybe if you just take the throw ins it could be right. But when it comes to offside decisions (and he was talking about offside decisions when he gave his number) I get a completely different story.

We came up to only 90% of the offside calls correct this season. Now of course it could be that last season the assistant-referees were exceptional and had the best season ever. And maybe this season the assistant-referees have been a bit crap. But somehow I don’t really would buy in that fairy tale.

Was it again a deliberate lie? Or was he again believing some nonsense numbers? Only he will know.

Let us move on to the bias argument. There is no bias in the EPL he said. All is fair and square. Let us once again try to look at the numbers. Because every person who follows football and even sports in general knows that there is something like home/away bias. And Mike Riley, you should note that this also is a form of bias. But according to Riley it doesn’t exist in the EPL – which is odd in the extreme.

There have been studies about this before. But I will give him some numbers from his own “unbiased league” this season.

So I have taken the games and the refs and the yellow cards they have been giving and put them in this table you can see below.

Name

Matches

YELLOW

H

A

Phil Dowd

24

94

37

57

Mike Dean

24

89

46

43

Martin Atkinson

24

80

31

49

Mike Jones

19

75

28

47

Howard Webb

24

72

33

39

Kevin Friend

15

59

26

33

Andre Marriner

16

58

25

33

Mark Clattenburg

19

56

28

28

Lee Mason

20

54

24

30

Chris Foy

16

45

15

30

Peter Walton

15

45

21

24

Michael Oliver

18

44

21

23

Anthony Taylor

14

39

18

21

Mark Halsey

16

38

16

22

Lee Probert

16

36

15

21

Stuart Attwell

10

33

17

16

Neil Swarbrick

9

27

13

14

Jon Moss

9

27

14

13

308

971

428

543

TOTAL

44 %

56 %

And so it is plain to see what everybody who follows football knows: that apparently there is some bias when it comes to handing out yellow cards. Because in Mike Riley’ Utopia PL, the home and away teams would be treated in the same way and the yellow cards would be the same for them. After all it should even out.

But if you look at it you will see that the home teams get only 44 % of the yellow cards and the away teams get 56%. This is what you and I call the home and away bias. A bias we know and we should not accept, but which we do accept as being some kind of human factor which is hard to get out of the system.

But apparently the most important person in the Premier League Ref World doesn’t know of its existence. And apparently he is the one that should know about it and do something about it. He is the one that should talk to the refs and say: hey guys there is some bias, the home and away bias and you should take it in to consideration a bit.

But it is a fact that away teams get more cards than the home teams, Mr. Riley. Time for you to find out about it.

And to round this off I also would like to point at the referees themselves a bit. And I will add their percentage in a bonus table. Because in this table you can see if a ref is a homer or not.

Name

Matches

YELLOW

HOME

AWAY

Phil Dowd

24

94

39%

61%

Mike Dean

24

89

52%

48%

Martin Atkinson

24

80

39%

61%

Mike Jones

19

75

37%

63%

Howard Webb

24

72

46%

54%

Kevin Friend

15

59

44%

56%

Andre Marriner

16

58

43%

57%

Mark Clattenburg

19

56

50%

50%

Lee Mason

20

54

44%

56%

Chris Foy

16

45

33%

67%

Peter Walton

15

45

47%

53%

Michael Oliver

18

44

48%

52%

Anthony Taylor

14

39

46%

54%

Mark Halsey

16

38

42%

58%

Lee Probert

16

36

42%

58%

Stuart Attwell

10

33

52%

48%

Neil Swarbrick

9

27

48%

52%

Jon Moss

9

27

52%

48%

And so you can see that Dowd is a typical home ref. Newcastle anyone?  As is Atkinson. Chris Foy is the king of the home refs with only 33% of his cards against the home teams.

And probably I will ruin his career for good when mentioning this but I have said before that in my opinion Clattenburg is the most fair ref in the EPL. He can have a bad game but even then it is bad for both teams. But he is the only ref that has managed to get the same number of yellow cards for the home team as for the away team. So one could say that Clattenburg is the only ref that has been free of this bias in this season.

So Mike Riley was just talking about Clattenburg when he said there is no bias? But sorry Mike you forgot the rest then.

The problem is once again that I cannot tell for sure what Mike Riley is doing when he says this.   After all the numbers we have can be found on the internet by any person who is looking for it.

But we have all this secrecy of the PGMOL. After giving us numbers that apparently are not correct you have to wonder what is going on.  Is he ignorant of the truth?  If so then it shows that he surely is not the right person at the right place as the head of the referees.

So once again Mr. Mike Riley I would politely ask you to come out in the open with ALL THE NUMBERS. Come out in the open with why the refs are appointed like they are now. And most of all let us know where and how you get your figures.  And if you cannot justify all the figures you have put out, with these odd percentages you quote you should resign from the PGMOL. I want to trust the person who runs the refs in the PL. And from all you have done in the past and present I see no sign at all that you are a person that can be trusted.  Open up the books please and tell us what is going on.

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Giving each ref each team just twice a season would solve the crisis

Mike Riley and the garden of secrecy

How many wrong calls do refs make per game – and in favour of whom?

51 Replies to “Mike Riley: the ref statistics you quote are simply wrong”

  1. Great Stuff Walter

    A question for Riley

    Why has Atkinson done 24 games, yet not been to OT this season, doing anyone any favours are you, serving the master? Like Arsene Wenger “I do not believe in coincidence”

  2. Surely you don’t think that you’ve proved Clattenburg is unbiased and Foy is not? Perhaps Foy really is unbiased but refereed a couple of matches when the away team began playing dirty, skewing his percentage? The sample size is too small to draw any kind of conclusion whatsoever.

    And if it was, it doesn’t actually prove anything. Who has proved that the percentage should always be 50-50? Different team chose different tactics at home and away from home. Some may play normally at home but resort to thuggery when playing away from home. Some teams play much better away than at home and may reverse those tactics. There’s nothing to say that it will eventually balance out.

  3. Feygooner,
    It is “all of them” who claim that it will be 50-50 at the end of the day. They say teams are treated the same way. Remember: it evens out.
    They claim this without any prove. Just the “you got to believe us on our word” or “it is like this because we say it is”.

    I really wonder if let us take Stoke away from home is different from being at their own ground.

    And as Riley said: there is no bias he is wrong. And the head of the refs who is wrong about such a thing is not capable of doing a good job. The home bias exists and if he doesn’t know it he is in the wrong job.

  4. In this article by the way I took the official yellow cards. The ones that were given. And in a way these are already numbers that hide a part of the bias.
    I also took those numbers because otherwise people might say that our numbers are biased because of the bias of the ref reviewers. So we (our ref reviewers) have nothing to do with those numbers.

  5. This is a pretty poor article, in honesty.

    It contains a very shallow level of statistical reasoning. Where is the discussion of confounding variables? For instance, how much of the variation can be explained by the difference in terms of the way teams play at home, compared to away from home. To be making these sorts of calls, you would need to look at whether or not the fouls and cards were legitimate and correct calls by the referees in question and then analyse the multitude of factors that could potentially explain the errors, etc. I’m not saying that would necessarily be a perfect analysis, but when there are so many factors deciding potential quantative outcomes, the route you’ve taken here is pretty deceptive.

    I’m certainly not saying that all referees are perfect, and further, I’m not saying that it is impossible for referees to be driven by an agenda (South Korea in the 2002 World Cup springs to mind), but I think what you’ve done here (without reading any of your other pieces, admittedly) is lazy.

  6. Gooner,

    Okay what is the difference between Arsenal playing at home or away?
    What is the difference between Stoke playing at home or away?

    Will Stoke suddenly stop kicking or elbowing?

    And in these numbers you will have Stoke 10 at home and 10 away so and here we go again… shouldn’t it even out?

    And yet apparently….not

  7. The debate regarding offsides is very difficult. Of course the refs get it almost 100% correct if you count the situations were there is really no doubt… If you only count the situations that are debatable, then the number is likely to be very different.

  8. In a way you could say you are right Gooner: I was a bit lazy.

    I could have gone for the Untold numbers and show also how many difference there is about the yellow cards that are not given and the home and away teams and that should have been given.
    Maybe I will take this also on in the next days/weeks/months. But then some will come out and say: your numbers are biased… sigh…

    But what about the laziness from let us say Riley. He just claims something without even presenting any numbers at all.

  9. I want to ask you how you see the perfect ref situation in the EPL?
    Is that a world where all the refs hand out the equal amount of cards to home and away tems?
    Do your reports take into considderation that some teams are more “dirty” than others, and should therefore get more yellow cards than the other team?

    I like a good serious blog where you analyze things based on the whole, and not from day to day performances.

    One of the few good ones out there, keep up the good work Walter.

  10. The perfect situation would be where the yellow cards are shown when they are required. 😉

    The point is that over one season those dirty teams play as much at home and away so …it should even out. Apparently…it doesn’t

  11. Walter,

    I believe you have the data about how many fouls were committed by the home team and away team in each of the games that you have reviewed (I am talking about about the Untold count and not official EPL count of fouls). What would be more useful here is to show the percentage of fouls that were committed by home team versus away team, and whether the cards reflect that ratio. So, out of 100, if home teams committed 40 fouls and away team committed 60 fouls, then it would be fair for a ref to have 40-60 ratio in his/her yellow cards awarded. Basically, is the number of cards reflect the number of fouls, then that is what I would call fairness. Pure numbers of how many cards were awarded are not that helpful.

  12. Walter,
    Micky R knows fully well that the big lie repeated by the media echo-chamber is worth more that 1,000 studies that go unannounced. That is the irrational reality that we are dealing with in the battle for the hearts and minds.

  13. Mahesh,
    But, to whatever extent you might be right, Walter’s figures do show that the widely-believed and echoed sacred and knee-jerk Mantra that “all calls even out” so, with good intentions, there are no worries. His figures, taken with his other 3 studies (and so many more, including last season’s brilliant final report), do show that the PGMOL paves their road to hell with NO good intentions.

  14. Walter,
    Exactly: accountability and total data are demanded of those who expose the lies of the Hives of Riley; whereas Mick R’s pronouncements, being those of OfficialDumb, are not questioned. It is the mass culture of deference that has been well engrained, even to the point of hardly anyone even sparing the keystrokes to demand video replay. It doesn’t take 50% of fans to successfully advocate a true reform, but there’s nothing approaching that to date on display in the comments here. Alas.

  15. Gooner,
    You admittedly (to your credit) have read this in isolation from all the rest of what has been statistically argued and demonstrated here for at least two years. You come up with “deceptive” and “lazy.” Your one concession to possible bent refereeing is South Korea ten years ago. You may have succeeded in this drive-by but when it comes to “superficial” and “lazy” I think you have shown us the way to “deception.” What would you say to your boy Micky R’s data-free pronouncements? And not a word on that from you. What would you say to the other pieces in this series, which you haven’t read. What would you say to the period cumulative ref reviews if you would spare the time to look at them? I think you PROJECT your own laziness on to one man who’s article you take out of a far larger context; which, based on your lawyer’s brief, is what it seems that you are really targeting. So admit that, or do your homework first, or give us your fair and balanced view of Micky R’s diktat that their calls are 93/99 percent accurate. And, at the level of everyday and media discourse, there is no way that even a deaf person could deny that most people are well-trained to say that it all evens out in the end. Imo, this is where Walter’s argument, even standing on its own, has its real power and value.

  16. Well we know now where the 1 % wrong calls offside decisions is made this season as Chelsea got a blatant offside goal allowed.

  17. With this statement Mike Riley is discrediting himself further. What an arrogance! It’s like saying “you’re all idiots and I’m right anyway ’cause I’m in charge”. The lack of transparency in how refs are appointed etc. is very worrying indeed. Football is is a big, big money business these days and therefore is pron to corruption. With Riley’s modus operandi being so secretive you’ve got to wonder what is going on. Poles say “if you’re not sure what it’s about, it’s about money”.

  18. Being a “home” ref is a very well known and well researched curiostity of human behaviour, so anyone disregarding what Walter has done needs to read up some more on the subject.

    Riley is certainly lying when he claims there is no bias and it is interesting to see this confirmed in the stats provided, although only a few referees fall outside the 60-40 range that is ‘understandable’, if only Riley had the backbone to admit there is this bias and work to reduce it with specific training for the referees.

    Still at least this home – away bias is one bias that should actually even itself out over the course of the season.

  19. @Walter not just the first one but both of their goals were offside…i do wonder who the lino was? Could it have been S. Child?
    Now im really worried about tomorrow as i can see Atkinson screwing us over to give his fav team a huge favour but with city also wanting to be screwed over i just dont know really and it really makes me mad cause as Shard once said these idiots are really ruining the fun for us..the bastards are making us guess if we will see a fair game or not

  20. Mahdain,
    Yes and that is the essence of World Wrestling Federation (WWF) gladiatorial entertainment. Fans do not expect fairness, but melodrama. This is what EPL/PGMOL has done to a sport on behalf of its preferred type of fandumb and in service to its bottomless greed pit. If fans do not expect fairness, they will not demand fairness, and fairness will not be delivered. Fairness cannot be the reliable and predictable cash cow that a manipulated result can reliably bring. A manipulated unprotested result is a profit center; a gift that keeps on giving. And the one thing that can slow it down is fan’s smartening up and wanting a little bit more from their sports lives and for their sports expenditure. The PGMOL/EPL/UEFA bet on the low expectation that people will not rise above. Sites like UA and some readers regularly suggest that more is desirable, right and – most dangerous – possible. But it’s up to the fans to actually demonstrate that they want more than what is now regularly – and by design – being served up as their entertainment.

  21. Mahdain, you are right I have just seen the images of the second goal as I didn’t see it live. Mata was offside when Torres took his shot on goal that came to him.

    But don’t worry, Mike Riley will even things out in the next away game from Wigan. Isn’t that ..in the Emirates???

  22. @Mahdain

    I too felt both goals were offside. None of the commentators even mentioned the possibility of it being so for the second goal. Just going on and on about Torres’ volley.

  23. MK,
    I’d be grateful for one reference to one study out there about referee homing behavior, as you suggest exist.

  24. Walter

    Was Mata offside? I didn’t even catch that. I thought that as Mata took his shot, there were 2 chelsea players standing ahead of him and hampering the keeper’s ability to make a save.

  25. Yes Shard Mata was offside. It is clear to see if you look at the 6 yard line

  26. Walter,

    Good article. Kudos for admitting there was some lazy analysis, but I think your message was effective. Riley says there is no bias, and you point out using a single metric (yellow cards) that there indeed appears to be at least some level of bias.

    Keep fighting the good fight!

  27. Hi Walter,
    I’m sorry but I’m not convinced by your first table, a 44/56 split is not a big difference and not enough to reflect a bias. You also have to take into account that the home team will be playing with a different confidence and will be more familiar with the surrounding, the intimidation can cause the away team to make mistakes. Even still, 44/56 is not much bias at all, are you saying that only 50/50 is acceptable? Your second table however, does point to some culprits who should be pulled up / re-trained. Bearing in mind these could all be for genuine bookable offences, I think you are quoting the wrong data to show a bias.

    The issue should not be with the number of red and yellow cards issued in total but instead it should be with the number of incorrect ones. That is a bias!

  28. ever considered that rather than home/away bias or anything else which shows referee bias and as such can be used as an excuse by mr Wenger what we might be looking at in these statistics is the logical refereeing response to the tactics used by away teams

    Away teams are more likely to play an aggressive disruptive tactic aiming to presure opponents on the ball and counter attack quickly whereas the home team can play a more patient build up game.

  29. @Walter – good article. I have followed this series about Riley with considerable interest. And yes, the statistics you have shown over the last two years justify asking a heap of questions to Riley. I don’t think you will get any sort of answer. At some point – the sooner the better in my view – the questions need to be presented to someone higher up the responsibility chain. Can we embarrass the UK Minister of Sport? As a political animal he would not want to be seen supporting bias – or would he? Basically, we need to consider a level (or levels) above Riley.

    Further, a UA article a few weeks ago discussed the finances of the PGMOL. This is something which seems to be just as secret as Riley’s decisions. Lets not lose sight of this possible achillies heel.

  30. Interesting post match interview by Martinez. He said the linesman had a shocker, and that you want to believe that they were just mistakes, and said it was disgusting and wrong that his players had to have the feeling of a defeat after ,in a footballing sense, they had done everything they could to secure a positive result.

    But then he also said, you want to believe that you get some bad decisions, and some good decisions. And when the interviewer asked him if this will reopen the debate on use of video technology, Martinez was very quick to say, NO..If you are good at your job, you don’t need these things. Maybe just goal line…

    Hmmm… Cover up, and towing the party line, to try and get favourable decisions in the league so they can stay up? Or are those his real views? If they are, I think he’s stupid.

    It’s so intensely frustrating because it is so easy to fix. A viewer halfway across the world can see within 5 seconds that the decision was wrong, yet we are supposed to accept injustice, because at some point, it’ll supposedly even out? Sport isn’t about fairness anymore (if it ever was), just a drama. Are people really happy with the way things are? It’s nonsense.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/17647367

  31. Shard, stupid or afraid…

    Afraid to go against the “party line” as you call it. I think Martinez is not a fool and he has seen where it gets you to go against the party line (Wenger)

  32. Amerigooner,
    nail – head – hit 😉

    I failed on the Keep It Simple test 🙂

  33. bjtgooner,

    About getting an answer…

    does a dictator give answer to a question he doesn’t like?
    Has an organisation that hides from the public has something to hide?
    Does the the sun rises in the east?

  34. Walter,

    That’s great, let me make it clear that I think what you and the ref reviewers are doing here is amazing. I do think it is wasted by representing the data incorrectly and irrelevantly. Showing that teams get more calls in favour at home doesn’t tell us much especially if they are all legitimate and correct calls.

    The great thing about the ref reviews is that you are evaluating and counting the rights and wrongs but to represent bias you have to give stats referring to just the incorrect decisions for the arguement to have any credibility. Counting the correct decisions is irrelevant as they are correct and not biased.

  35. @Walter.

    I agree about the dictator. That is why at some point we need to consider going to a higher level.

  36. I agree with you Stuart.
    But sometimes it is hard (no need to feel sorry for me 😉 ) but when I present the numbers from our reviews some people shout: biased numbers.
    But at the end of the season we should be able to tell the incorrect decisions, the incorrect yellows, the incorrect reds, the incorrect goals etc against each team. And I don’t know if Dogface can maybe even tell us when those calls were made (home or away)

    But now I’m dreaming away a bit I think…

  37. @bjtgooner

    In regards to that, I wonder if the UK has a Public Interest Litigation law.. In India, this law has led to a cricket body, despite being a private body, being deemed by the Supreme Court to be serving a public purpose, and as such being liable to the same anti-corruption and transparency laws, as government bodies. Of course, I’m no lawyer, so I don’t know if there are any riders attached to that, but it was a judgment which had some impact in at least cleaning up the system of sale of tickets in even other cricket bodies.

  38. I am looking forward to the end of the season to have a look at the numbers and see exactly what they mean when they say it all evens out in the end. Following on from this, being able to compare successive seasons is the ideal. I’m not criticising but I just think you are not only trying to prove the bias point here but to also get more people on board and with each review you are waking more people up to what is going on (you can see this with each time a new face leaves comments). It would be a shame to push some of these away and weaken the evidence by representing it irrelevantly.

    There are so many possibilities to look at. It would be good to see if there is a link between incorrect calls and Arsenal scoring first / taking the lead early on as well as incorrect cards and big / important games next but maybe I am dreaming also.

  39. * incorrect cards resulting in suspensions or leaving a player one card away from a suspension.

  40. Interesting watching Mike’s performance in that link in the article. It scares me that this guy is in charge. It’s all so shockingly obvious, but even the bastards doing the commentary didn’t have the nuts to admit that he was systematically screwing us over. And looking at today’s refs in action, he’s obviously trained his minions well.
    I’m also forced to conclude that a large number of football fans are stupid, to have their perceptions shaped by the lies in the media. Either that or they can see the cheating etc, but refuse to admit it, because their teams are the beneficiaries, at least some of the time (i.e. when playing against Arsenal). Both scenarios are quite disturbing.

  41. @Stuart

    Is 44/56 significantly different from 50/50? I’m working on other stuff, so I can’t do this properly. I have gone through similar things with Monte Carlo methods.

    50/50 has a difference of 0. 0 divided by 50 (smallest of two) is 0.
    49/51 has a difference of 2. 2 divided by 49 is about 4.1%.
    48/52 has a difference of 4. 4 divided by 48 is about 8.3%

    44/56 has a difference of 12. 12 divided by 44 is about 27.3%.

    33/67 has a difference of 34. 34 divided by 33 is a bit more than 100%.

    Where would you draw the line on significance?

    I’ll throw math at some of this work as well later. There is LOTS of data here. If skeletons can be found, the work Walter and his reviewers are doing will find them.

  42. Why did I bring up Monte Carlo?

    Binomial probability problems have been around forever, and you can look up probabilities from tables (someone else did the calculations).

    The problem is that the number of events is no longer known. If referees were perfect, the number of events is known, and the tables would work just fine. But, referees aren’t perfect, and so the number of events is not known. What I did in the past for UA, was to assume the number of events is Poisson with a mean of what was observed, and that the larger probability event (true/false, left/right, …) was also Poisson with a mean of what was observed. In doing so, it is possible to have random draws where the number positive/correct/… is larger than the number of events. And so some draws are rejected for being non-physical.

    The probability of rejection becomes larger when you try to find out how likely statistics quoted by Riley are consistent with observed data. I’ve run a couple of simulations out to something like 1 million games, and I can’t get a single occurrence of Riley’s statistics. The particular kind of incident was different than what Walter was talking about here. But at 1 part per million level, I am quite sure that Riley is making up statistics. He does NOT have the data to support his claims.

  43. Is it safe to assume that when sides have possession, they don’t get yellow carded? Likewise, when a side is trying to get/regain possession, it’s more likely to pick up cards?
    So surely it’s reasonable for home sides to pick up less yellows than the away sides?

    Looking at the past three PL completed seasons, away wins average about 25%. There may well be a little home team bias to build in but even so, the figures aren’t too peculiar in my book.

    I suspect Walter, that you will get far more reliable stats from UA’s own analyses.

  44. GF60, I agree with the possession part but still Arsenal gets more yellow and red cards than other teams…
    So this contradicts the possession=less fouls/yellow cards

    But then again is Arsenal a good example to look at ref statistics? 😉

  45. @MK

    That last reference actually has a lot of further references itself. The data analysed is 2651 games in Spain. The article is in English.

  46. Not sure about us getting more…maybe it’s less Arsenal fouls = a yellow than others, but I have more than a sneaking suspicion that we get more cards away than we do at home. Need to do some digging for the stats.

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