What is wrong with PL refs? Case study: Clattenburg

by Walter Broeckx

Hi all, after being exiled from the Untold websites because of the Zombies attack I’m back now and will try to work further on the referees and their results with all the teams who are currently in the PL.

So what is the meaning of this article and the others about the refs and their statistical of each team?

The meaning is that if a ref is appointed for a certain game you can immediately check on his results in the past for the two teams involved.  Before you could find this by going to our page about the home team and then you could check the away team. But now you just go to the article about the ref and all the statistical information from the past is in front of your eyes.

I’m not a gambling man and in my country there is no gambling culture so I don’t gamble on games. But if I were to be a gambler I would use such statistics to have a better look at what might happen when a certain refs does certain teams.

In a way I think that those statistics were one of the things used as a starting point in the Italian football scandal a few years ago. You remember the Calciopoli scandal in Italy where they sent certain refs to certain games that they knew had more or less favourable statistics and feelings for certain teams….

By the way talking about Wikipedia and the Calciopoli scandal I should let you know that it is sad to see that in the English version there are no transcripts of some of the phone calls that were made.  I will try to translate them into English for Untold in the next weeks you will see what I have talked about in the past. But that is for later.

Now we are here to show you the statistics of Mark Clattenburg.

	Total	won	draw	lost	won	draw	lost	Achieving
Arsenal	797	426	212	159	53,45%	26,60%	19,95%
Clattenburg	25	17	1	7	68,00%	4,00%	28,00%	Over
Aston Villa	797	287	249	261	36,01%	31,24%	32,75%
Clattenburg	27	8	9	10	29,63%	33,33%	37,04%	Average
Chelsea	797	414	206	177	51,94%	25,85%	22,21%
Clattenburg	19	12	4	3	63,16%	21,05%	15,79%	Over
Everton	797	282	230	285	35,38%	28,86%	35,76%
Clattenburg	9	4	2	3	44,44%	22,22%	33,33%	Average
Fulham	443	137	128	178	30,93%	28,89%	40,18%
Clattenburg	22	6	10	6	27,27%	45,45%	27,27%	Average
Liverpool	797	389	203	205	48,81%	25,47%	25,72%
Clattenburg	13	6	4	3	46,15%	30,77%	23,08%	Average
Man City	607	226	159	222	37,23%	26,19%	36,57%
Clattenburg	25	16	7	2	64,00%	28,00%	8,00%	Over
MU	797	520	165	112	65,24%	20,70%	14,05%
Clattenburg	21	12	4	5	57,14%	19,05%	23,81%	Average
Newcastle	717	284	192	241	39,61%	26,78%	33,61%
Clattenburg	No games
Norwich	227	68	72	87	29,96%	31,72%	38,33%
Clattenburg	8	2	3	3	25,00%	37,50%	37,50%	Average
QPR	227	71	57	99	31,28%	25,11%	43,61%
Clattenburg	11	2	4	5	18,18%	36,36%	45,45%	Under
Reading	101	31	21	49	30,69%	20,79%	48,51%
Clattenburg	5	1	2	2	20,00%	40,00%	40,00%	Under
Southampton	531	155	146	230	29,19%	27,50%	43,31%
Clattenburg	6	1	4	1	16,67%	66,67%	16,67%	Under
Stoke	177	53	54	70	29,94%	30,51%	39,55%
Clattenburg	18	6	7	5	33,33%	38,89%	27,78%	Average
Sunderland	443	119	112	212	26,86%	25,28%	47,86%
Clattenburg	No games
Swansea	63	20	21	22	31,75%	33,33%	34,92%
Clattenburg	4	3	0	1	75,00%	0,00%	25,00%	Over
Tottenham	797	307	210	280	38,52%	26,35%	35,13%
Clattenburg	26	12	6	8	46,15%	23,08%	30,77%	Average
WBA	253	62	64	127	24,51%	25,30%	50,20%
Clattenburg	13	4	2	7	30,77%	15,38%	53,85%	Average
West Ham	641	210	164	267	32,76%	25,59%	41,65%
Clattenburg	15	5	3	7	33,33%	20,00%	46,67%	Average
Wigan	291	81	73	137	27,84%	25,09%	47,08%
Clattenburg	27	9	4	14	33,33%	14,81%	51,85%	Average

So Mark Clattenburg has four teams that have a higher than average win percentage when he does their games. And there are 4 teams who are under performing when he is around.  Those 3 teams are  QPR, Reading and Southampton.  This might of course have something to do with the fact that those are rather new teams in the PL and as a result are teams fighting for survival and not winning that many games.

This also can have something to do with the fact that he is doing many top teams; so it could be that Clattenburg does for example Manchester City – Reading and then a Manchester City win is rather normal in most cases.

In the case of Clattenburg we see that 13 teams are performing as can be expected in general when he is around. Teams you could say who win some, who lose some, who draw some.  But nothing extraordinary to report about it when you compare the games with Clattenburg or without Clattenburg.

I think this high number of average teams shows that what we have found in our review of last season is correct. We then have said that Clattenburg is one of the least biased refs in the PL. Being less biased means that the results would be very much in line with the average results of each team.

He also is one of the few refs under whom Manchester United doesn’t over perform. I think this shows that in general he is strong enough to stand up against the pressure from Old Trafford.

He is one of the few refs for whom I generally believe that if he makes mistakes, it really are mistakes. Nothing more, nothing less. Just honest mistakes.

And coming back to the gambling I talked about a ref that will hardly surprise you when he is around, so maybe not a good gambling object unless you try to play a safe game.

The referee analysis

The full index of articles in order of publication is now available here.

• Be careful in wishing for new owners
• Back to the 1950s.

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

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