Ref Review 2012/3. Andre Marriner; a good ref but 10% of his goal decisions are wrong!

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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Up to now we have focussed on the decisions themselves and on the teams. With some shocking outcomes. Now we go further in our search of how the referees did and from now on we will be focussing on the individual performances of the referees. And when this is finished we will have a go at picking the ref of the season based on the numbers from our reviews.

But  first we will start the referees in alphabetical order and we start the the first name of the referees and then we find that we have ref Andre Marriner to be checked first.

We will first give you a table where we look at all the decisions and then we will dig a bit deeper and check the more important decisions.  Let us see how good…or bad the referees were.

Andre Marriner has done 24 games in the PL last season and we have reviewed 14 of his games. That is 54,17% of his total games in the PL.

First we look at all the decisions he made in the matches we could review:

We can see that Marriner had to make 1893 decisions in total and he had 1691 correct decisions or decisions we had to judge as correct. That is 89,33% of his decisions that were correct. That is if we take a look at all the decisions, although some of those decisions are not really checked as we couldn’t check them (because there weren’t good enough camera angles and because they usually don’t show replays from every throw in).   So we can’t be sure, and we give the referee the benefit and say they were correct.

Now a total of almost 90% correct decisions is of course great. Refs are human and can make mistakes. The better the ref the fewer mistakes he will make of course. And so all in all this is what I would call a great result. I must say that this is no big surprise to me as I think that Andre Marriner is one of the better refs in the PL.

But why don’t we move on to  the important decisions.

And now we see that the correct numbers of decisions has gone down to 78,90%. That is some 10,45% less compared with the overall numbers.  Now this still is a very good number if we compare it with the rest of the referees. As I know all the numbers already I can say he doesn’t look bad at all compared to the others. You will see other numbers on important decisions that makes you wonder what they are doing out there. I can promise you that.

If we look in detail we could be able to see the strong points and the less strong points of this ref when it comes to making important decisions.

We can see that 10% of the goals scored in his games were wrong.  Again this is a number that is way too high for my liking. It is also a number that Riley never mentions when he spouts numbers. He always tells us that the numbers are higher yet we come to the same conclusion each year that 10% of the goal decisions were wrong.

If we look at the penalty decisions we see that 50% are not correct. So once again we see the same points as last year appearing in our reviews. Refs need help for penalty decisions. It is too much a lottery at the moment. Sometimes right, sometimes wrong. But when a penalty is awarded it should be checked instantly and if there is evidence that it was wrong the game should restart with a  dropped ball, a corner in the case of a defender playing the ball… If it was a dive a foul against the striker and a yellow card. Please Fifa act and change this.

What I find a bit disappointing for a ref like Marriner is the yellow and red cards. For a Fifa ref it looks as if he was very lenient in the PL. I wonder if his numbers in European games is the same. Something I might have a look at later on as I do think that refs in European games are more in line with the instructions when it comes to giving yellow and red cards.

And now we can move on to something more explosive:  the bias for or against the teams he did. And I put this in a graphic so you can see which teams were favoured by his errors and which teams saw the decisions going against them. A positive number indicates that the weighted decisions went in favour of said team. A negative number indicates that the decision went against said team.  Now let us see how the final numbers on this look like.

A few teams with relatively low bias scores one might note. Everton, Tottenham, QPR, Liverpool and Reading, West Ham and Newcastle  had a close to zero bias.  That is 7 of the 14 teams we could check with Marriner.  Not bad to have lots of teams having less than 10 weighted bias points.

The teams that were more favoured by his errors are Chelsea, Manchester United, Sunderland and top of the list (and probably a surprise to you and I) are Fulham. I didn’t see that coming to be honest.

If we look at teams who had the errors very much going against them we see Stoke and Manchester City. Stoke is an exception as they had a rather positive bias overall but not from Marriner.

And then top of the list on the negative side are Arsenal. Having the totals in mind this might not come as a surprise. In fact if you have read the league bias table you will know that any ref where Arsenal are not top of the negative list is more or less a surprise. We might surprise you later on… who knows.

Final conclusion: Not bad numbers for this ref who is one of the better refs in the PL and was also one of the best last season.  Still a few things that need attention in my opinion or that need help from the outside if the law makers would allow it.

Just work a bit on the bias numbers is my last piece of good advice to this ref.

Editorial note: if you want to comment it is perhaps worth having a look at some of the background to this research in the articles below, if you have not come across Referee Decisions before.  We have had situations in which supporters of various teams have not done this, and made comments which, in retrospect they maybe wish they hadn’t.

• 1. Who reviewed the games
• 2. What we did and what next
• 3. All the decisions in numbers
• 4. The first, at times astonishing, numbers
• 5. Home and away bias
• 6.  It all evens out in the end – Wigan last season
• 7.  West Ham: Life with a positive bias
• 8.  West Brom and the Referees
• 9.  Tottenham, penalties and some amusing comments
• 10.  Swansea City and a change this year
• 11.  Sunderland, a positive bias
• 12.  Stoke, where refereeing is different.
• 13.  Southampton – how did they ever survive?
• 14.  QPR – a strange case
• 15.  Norwich – more errors than acceptable
• 16.  Newcastle United – again, more errors than there should be.
• 17.  Manchester United: 70% of wrong decisions in their favour. 
• 18.  Manchester City: unlike their neighbours a very small bias.
• 19: Liverpool: you should blame the refs
• 20: Fulham – it all evens out in the end
• 21: Everton: a slight bias in favour
• 22: Chelsea: an occasional bias against
• 23: Aston Villa: a huge bias in favour
• 24: Refs give opposition freedom to kick Arsenal off the park.
• 25. The complete league bias table
• 26. Untold has said it for a long while, others follow