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.
__________________________
Next ref in our series that are done in alphabetical order we have ref Anthony Taylor. Ref Taylor has done 24 games in the PL in the season 2012/2013. And we have reviewed him in 14 games. That means we have done 58,33% of his games. So should give us a fair view on his performance in the PL.
First we look at all the decisions he made in the matches we could review:
Taylor had to make some 1858 decisions in these 14 games. And 1600 of those decisions were judged as correct. Of course by now you know that judging them as correct is not the same as being correct completely. When we can’t judge a call or when we are not 100% sure he made a mistake we call the decision correct. But it might be that when we would have other angles to see that the call could have been incorrect. But by this method we see that when we look at all the calls he had to make that Ref Taylor was correct in 86,11% of the decisions. Not disastrous I would say.
But we have to say that for decisions like a throw in, goal kicks etc we can not really check most of those decisions. So we have judged them correct in most cases without checking.
Now we move on to the important decisions. As this can give us a better impression on how his decision making is.
And we can see that in the 14 games we reviewed ref Taylor had to make 835 important decisions. We now see that his score suddenly drops to 71,26% correct calls. And that is a big drop compared to his overall decisions. We point at the fact that these type of decisions are decisions we can check better in general, as many fouls are shown in slow motion and so we can see if he did a good job or not. His foul calling isn’t really up to the standard I feel. Only 73% is too low for me. I think refs in the PL should be aiming at a score around 80%.
The best type of decisions to get right are the goal decisions. But even there I feel this number is too low. Almost 14% of the goal decisions were wrong in the 14 games he did last season. 6 goals were wrongly awarded or cancelled by the ref and as goals decide the points this is bad.
Our calling for immediate video review of the goals could be a big help for this ref and for a fairer final result. In Belgium in the highest division they have said that having 2 game changing decisions wrong over a season can cost you your place in the top league. Taylor is lucky that he is doing his job in England and under the PGMOL, an organisation which doesn’t seem too bothered to be as strict as other leagues.
His penalty decisions are also rather disastrous numerically. 72% of his penalty decisions were wrong. This is disgraceful.
And the distributions of yellow and red cards are also bad.
It is cleat that the first not completely bad numbers were covered up with the decisions where he had the help from his assistants who saved his score for a big part.
Now let us see if there are teams who had some favours from his mistakes or who have suffered a big deal.
And we can see that we do have a few teams that have a zero bias score with Taylor in charge. The lucky teams are Stoke, Manchester City, WBA and Liverpool.
Then we have a few teams who have a low positive bias in their favour. Manchester United, Everton, QPR and Fulham are those teams. The teams that seems to have a big bias in their favour are Norwich, Reading, Wigan and Sunderland. Taylor seems to have give them a lot of favours in the last season. And certainly Sunderland seems to have a good relationship with Taylor.
But when there are winners, there are also losers or teams that have suffered from his mistakes. Aston Villa and West Ham have suffered but not with big numbers. Chelsea and Swansea were hit a bit higher in paying for the mistakes of the ref. And both Southampton and Arsenal didn’t get anything from this ref last season at first sight. These are bad negative bias numbers for these teams.
It seems that Taylor doesn’t like those teams.
FINAL CONCLUSION: The overall numbers are not great and when we take the important decisions the numbers go down to a level that is too low for the PL and certainly for my liking. I think if the PL wants to be the best league in the world they have to have better refs than Taylor. And yet…the PGMOL has rewarded Taylor with a FIFA badge if I’m not mistaken. Certainly for a FIFA ref these numbers are unacceptable.
I wonder on what the PGMOL has based themselves to promote Taylor to being a FIFA ref. It seems that they have seen other games than we have. Or maybe they didn’t check all the games themselves?
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
- 27. Andre Marriner; a good ref but 10% of his goal decisions are wrong!
Thank you Walter.
I don’t know what to say. Well, I do, but I’m going to wait a while so I don’t simply spout vitriol….
This referee should either lose his badge or go for refresher training . Getting most red cards, yellow cards and penalty decisions wrong can destroy a team. He is rather a disgrace. Please can somebody tell me his level of education?
Good article Walter, looks like he started this season the way he finished last.
With 80% reds wrong and 73% penalties wrong (Yellows not much better) the man is a total disgrace! A unique combination of incompetence and bias.
@bjtgooner
‘A unique combination of incompetence and bias.’
I think the use of the word ‘unique’ may be optimistic given the standard of the remainder of the referees.
@Walter, some info for you.
http://www.uefa.com/uefa/disciplinary/news/newsid=1984517.html
I’d love to see the write have a go at reffing some games at any level, let alone the top one. It’s an incredibly difficult job and done without the provision of endless replays from different angles.
Refs get little or no respect from players, managers and fans. This kind of article just goes to propagate this.
Interesting the Sunderland thing hasn’t this son of greater Manchester done us against Sunderland in the past? This ref should not be doing arsenal games end of but quite possible we will see him again soon against Sunderland? Have press and untold articles forced mike dean into the background to be replaced by this guy? On another note hear fergies book about to come out hope he uses it to give thanks to his PGMOL
So what’s the odds we get him (again) for our first match after the international break. If so, I think it would be time to bombard the interwebs with the above data.
And who would have thought that Taylor was shit at penalty decisions and red cards….
@Mick
What I really meant was that a lot of the other refs seem to be either incompetent or biased. Taylor appears to be blatantly both incompetent and biased – more obviously than many of the others.
In comparison I would consider Dean to be biased, not incompetent, but very cunning – and he uses his ability to subtly change a game – where in similar circumstances Taylor may achieve the same result – but in a boneheaded obvious way.
As far as we’re concerned, his numbers must have gone dramatically worse after the first game of the new season.
and this is a fifa ref? Seriously Riley? Are you for real? The promotion standards must be very low at PGMO. Forget being a fifa ref he shouldnt even be ref’ing the championship. I agree with bjtgooner he is the third coming of Dean(not 2nd as we have Probert for that). Incompetent biased prick..
Ian Harvey, the article did say that you really ought to read a bit of the background to this series before making a comment, for fear of appearing a little silly otherwise.
It seems you did not. The writer is a referee.
Just an observation: I remembered my thoughts on the Arsenal 3 Norwich 3 game of 2012:
“Enter the follicly challenged. He’d let increasing numbers of fouls/yellow card worthy assaults go by but none rated with his last which assured me, for one, that he was fit to referee Conference League at best. We’ve had many penalty appeals this season at the Grove. All have been turned down but none ranked as blatant as the push/trip on Robin as he was about to tap the ball into the net.”
Then the Villa game this year….on reflection his performance in the Norwich game compared to Villa, was quite a good one. :o(
He cannot be that incompetent, therefore one has to think that he is corrupt.
If A.Taylor had any respect from me before, it all evaporates without any trace after that abysmal performance at the Emirates against A.Villa. There is nothing he can do to suffice ‘cos he ended our potential unbeaten run.
Ian Harvey,
I think you are looking at this the wrong way.
Firstly, the writer is a Ref as was the reviewer.
Secondly, it is aimed at highlighting any bias (whether intended or unintended).
Thirdly, this is not intended to say the ref is crap, it is to highlight exactly the kind of angle you are coming from and that is that the refs are only human and are prone to making mistakes including big ones so why don’t they have technology or other means to assist them.
I get the feeling you are a ref. Am I correct? Why don’t you get in contact with the guys and join in?
The folly of indifference – a good watch .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CK4TUP0VKLY