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.
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In this part of the series we have a look at each team and see how the bias panned out for each team. This is based on the decisions themselves without putting any weight on different types of decision. A total table will be published at the end of this and then you can compare each team with the other teams. At the end it will be an interesting table, I can assure you that.
We will show this in a table for each team highlighting each type of decision. We will show you the totals when the team in the article got a favourable decision and when they got it against them.
As you know the traditional mantra “it all evens out at the end of the season” should be visible here. So we are just trying to see if it really does all even out.
As noted, there is no weighting of the decisions in the table. For now we just take each decision at the same value, which is of course not at all saying that a wrong penalty call not more important than a wrong throw in decision. But we have to start with the basic figures.
But now let us move to the next team in our survey: West Bromwich Albion.
We did 22 games of WBA last season and this is 57,89% of their total games. I think a good number of games to see how things went for them.
In the second column we see the type of decision. And in the column “favoured” we see how many decisions favoured WBA when we reviewed them. And in the column “Penalised” we see how many times a wrong decision went against them. The total swing is the difference between the favoured decisions and the penalised decisions.
A negative number in this column means that the total was against WBA and a positive number means that the total decisions was in their favour.
In the last column we see the average swing per game. And this gives an indication on how many decisions went against a team or were in favour of a team. The lower the number the lower number of decisions that were wrong. And a positive number indicates that in each game they get some decisions in their favour and a negative indicates how many decisions the team has to overcome.
The total number of decisions going in their favour was 16 decisions. Less than one decision per game. But the good thing for them is that it is a positive swing. If you can recall last year’s results we found that they had a rather negative bias against them. But not this time around. It can’t be so but it looks as if refs wanted to make up for last season a bit.
On the more important decisions we see that they had 5 wrong goals in total in the games we reviewed. Three in their favour and two against them. So a positive bias in the goals section of one goal. For the penalties the end result was no bias. But this doesn’t mean of course that some of the decisions might have cost them points or won them points.
So a small positive swing and one could say that on average they benefit for one decision per game. For WBA it almost does even out in the end.
Recent posts
- Liverpool’s naughty Suárez secret revealed in a slip by Gordon Taylor of the PFA.
- Why choose Arsenal instead of Liverpool? That’s Why.
- Arsenal to play the Court of Arbitration in Sport in Champs League knock out
Arsenal Anniversaries: 10 August
- 10 Arsenal 1976: Malcolm MacDonald’s debut v Grasshoppers in friendly.
- 10 August 1977: Don Howe returns as manager, six years after leaving
- 10 August 1980: Partizan Belgrade v Arsenal, last game for Paul Barron
- 10 August 1991: Arsenal 0 Tottenham 0 in Charity shield at Wembley
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
Five incorrect goals in 22 games seems very high to me. Regardless of whether the mistakes even out, to have nearly 23% affecting the most important aspect of games, namely, GOALS, reflects badly on match officials.
Someone feeling guilty about blatant cheating to win last seasons game?
Could get a diving board in at the training ground if you sign Saurez as well
This site is so far wide of the mark. You can rant on and on about all the ifs and buts until your blue in the face. Bottom line is the best teams finish at the top and the poorest teams finish at the bottom. We have manager who was great and has many attributes but only a fool would not question the current path he is following. The squad is not good enough to compete against the best hence when we play the best Europe wide we come up short. We are told we have money now but here we are a week away from the season and we have no improvement. This is what you should be concerned of instead of rattling on about immaterial dross and start to be honest about our present position. As a season ticket holder and long time arsenal fan it’s so sad and frustrating to have a manager and board that seem to have lost their desire to compete.
Kevin,
To be honest there are plenty of articles on this site and on others so maybe you could go and discuss the things you request there. This article is about the referee reviews hence the theme of the article being, well, about the referee reviews.