What’s wrong in the PL: Referees and Stoke City

by Walter Broeckx

Next in our series as we cover each and every Premier League team we have Stoke.

Now before any Stoke  supporters comes on here and suggest that it is not the averages but the actual decisions that count (as some fans of other clubs have done) may we suggest you take a look at both the introductory articles which you can find here and here.  You may also enjoy our other site: Referee Decisions.

And once you have done that come back and have a look at the statistical pointers we have found when we compare the overall results of Stoke with the results of each ref when he does Stoke games.

Of course you might have bad experiences with some refs in some games but who, after seeing the statistics, you find are not really that bad in general. You can share your experiences of course. But this article is not really about those games in particular. It is more about the total picture of the referee and this team.

Under the table I will try to give a short explanation on what you see.

	Total	won	draw	lost	won	draw	lost	% games
Stoke	177	53	54	70	29,94%	30,51%	39,55%
Atkinson	21	7	1	13	33,33%	4,76%	61,90%	9,25%
Clattenburg	18	6	7	5	33,33%	38,89%	27,78%	7,93%
Dean	15	4	3	8	26,67%	20,00%	53,33%	6,61%
Dowd
Foy	19	3	9	7	15,79%	47,37%	36,84%	8,37%
Friend	9	2	3	4	22,22%	33,33%	44,44%	3,96%
Jones	21	8	6	7	38,10%	28,57%	33,33%	9,25%
Halsey	18	10	4	4	55,56%	22,22%	22,22%	7,93%
Marriner	19	3	4	12	15,79%	21,05%	63,16%	8,37%
Mason	22	7	9	6	31,82%	40,91%	27,27%	9,69%
Moss	2	1	0	1	50,00%	0,00%	50,00%	0,88%
Oliver	9	4	2	3	44,44%	22,22%	33,33%	3,96%
Probert	19	11	1	7	57,89%	5,26%	36,84%	8,37%
Swarbrick	5	1	4	0	20,00%	80,00%	0,00%	2,20%
Taylor	8	2	2	4	25,00%	25,00%	50,00%	3,52%
Webb	22	10	8	4	45,45%	36,36%	18,18%	9,69%

So Stoke has a win percentage of 30% of their games. That is the number we will use to see how the refs did in this article.

First of all we see how many refs there are in our survey. And we see that Dowd has done no games including Stoke. This is because Dowd was born in Stoke and so the PGMOL thinks it is not wise to send him to Stoke games. I must say that with other refs they aren’t that cautious. There are Manchester born referees who do MU games for example.  [I suspect that if there were any referees who came from Kent or Cornwall, they wouldn’t be allowed to do Man U games – editor]

Now if Dowd were to be a real Stoke supporter it is of course fine he doesn’t referee their games but as we don’t know this for sure we just have to look at this difference. Another referee we will not take in to our numbers is Moss. He has only done two games so not enough data to really look at him. That leaves us with 14 refs who do Stoke games.

Who are the “good” refs for Stoke?  By good we mean that when they are around Stoke wins more than their average win percentage of 30%.  The best ref for Stoke is Swarbrick. And also Probert, Halsey, Webb and Oliver have rather high win % for Stoke.  That is five good refs for Stoke.

If we look at the average refs we see that we have Atkinson, Clattenburg, Dean, Friend, Jones, Mason and Taylor. When they are around Stoke has a win perecentage that comes close to their average win percentage, which is 30%.  That is seven refs who can be classified in the average category.

That leaves us with two bad refs. And the bad guys for Stoke are Foy and Marriner. And certainly the name Foy will be a surprise to a part of North London.  But those two are the “Dean-refs” (to use an Arsenal phrase)  for Stoke one could say.

Now the good news for Stoke is that the PGMOL is acting rather responsibly. There is no ref who has a major influence of more than 10%. The spread of the refs is as good as can be when we look at the (too small) number of referees in the PL. And so the bad refs are together only in charge of some 18 points in total. Nine points each, one could say. Still too much for my liking but still a whole lot better than the 18 Dean-points for one ref.

On the good side of things we see that the good refs do around 38% of the Stoke games. So its not all that bad for Stoke.   We have seen worse numbers in our review. With more bad refs per team and a higher influence of those refs.

The referee analysis

• Case study 10: Southampton
• Case study 9: Reading
• Case study 8: QPR
• Case study 7: Newcastle United
• Case study 6: Manchester City
• Case study 5: Liverpool
• Case Study 4: Fulham
• Case study 3: Everton
• Case study 2: Chelsea
• Cast study 1: Aston Villa
• Is it right to have refs doing two PL games over a weekend?
• So what’s wrong with the Premier League – the opening part of the story

The books…

• Woolwich Arsenal: The club that changed football – Arsenal’s early years
• Making the Arsenal – how the modern Arsenal was born in 1910
• The Crowd at Woolwich Arsenal FC: crowd behaviour at the early matches
• Royal Arsenal: from the Common to the Manor.  Coming next.

The sites from the same team…

• Referee Decisions – just what are the refs up to this season?
• The Arsenal History Blog from the AISA Arsenal History Society
• School sports minibuses: providing your child’s school with a bus
• Parent News – what is going on in schools these days?
• Teacher News – UK schools from the teachers’ perspective
• UK Education News – rolling news service