We all live in a PGMO dreamland…. well not all

By Walter Broeckx

We have been doing reviews for several years now on Untold Arsenal. So I have a lot of data from the seasons that are behind us and from the current season.

But I also have at my disposal some internal documents from the PGMO. One could say that a good wind blew the documents in my direction and I am happy to have them.

Because in one of those documents I know how the PGMO judges the refs. And in a way they are judged like we do the reviews on Untold. Now I know that they not just give the points on the calls. There are other things that are taken in to account.  Things we keep out of our reviews because they are not that important to define if a call was correct or not. But the things the PGMO also takes in to account are things like :

• The performance of the match officials, including:
−− Match Analysis
−− Key Match Incidents
−− General decision making
−− Man management
• The Fair Play of the teams and behaviour of the public
• The quality of the playing surface
• Pitch protection observance
• Attendance/non-attendance of the Drug Testing Team
• The accuracy of kick off times in both the 1st and 2nd half
• Any issues relating to crowd control
• Any breach of the PGMOL protocol
• Any other issues pertaining to the game which the delegate sees fit to report.

As you can imagine some of those are not really important to see if a ref done a good job.

The fishy thing could be “Any breach of the PGMOL protocol”. Because nowhere in the documents I got is there really a real PGMOL protocol to be found. Maybe this is the part where refs are judged on how they please the head of the PGMO?

But back to our main talking point: the score a referee gets.

We give the ref a score in %. But the PGMO gives the ref a score on 30 points. This is divided in to Key Match Incidents 10 points, General Decision Making 10 points and Man management 10 points.  But of course we can go from a score on 30 to a score in %.

And that is what we did with the reviews we did so far this season. And that is what I am planning to do with the numbers we got from our reviews in the past years.

So how does the PGMO scores the performances of the referees in the PL?

A score of +83% is considered to be a TOP CLASS PERFORMANCE.

A score between 76 % and 83% is considered a GOOD PERFORMANCE

A score between 70% and 76% is considered STANDARD PERFORMANCE

A score between 60% and 70% is considered to have KEY ERRORS in the match

A score under 60% is considered a POOR PERFORMANCE.

Now if we take the scored from the matches we had so far and put them in the category the PGMO standard is saying we get a table that looks like this

2014  2015 AFTER 11 MATCHES

 

So out of 11 matches we had 2 referee performances who had a score that can be considered to be GOOD PERFORMANCE. That is 18% of the matches.

Out of the 11 matches we had 6 matches where the referees made KEY ERRORS. And of course the last thing we want is referees making key errors. That is 54% of the matches from Arsenal that had key errors in it.

Out of the 11 matches we had 3 referee performances that can be qualified as POOR PERFORMANCE. That is 27% of the matches.

Having KEY ERRORS in matches is not what we want and in fact unacceptable. And we also don’t want POOR PERFORMANCES in matches. But in Arsenal matches we had 9 out of 11 matches where the refs messed up. That is in almost 82% of the matches that we have seen terrible refereeing.

I think this is terrible. A terrible state of refereeing in the PL.

I do want to say that this does not mean that all the terrible decisions went against Arsenal. But frankly that isn’t that important in this. What is important is that too many poor performances are being given by referees. And no team should suffer from bad refereeing.  I would gladly give up any point Arsenal won from bad refereeing in exchange for getting any point we lost because of bad refereeing.

But the main point is that the referee performances are not up to the standard they should be.

I know from time to time Mike Riley leaves his ivory tower and throws laughable numbers around. Numbers that are completely the opposite of what we have found in the past. If you would want to believe the numbers from Riley (and better make sure you sit well down in your chair)  they came up with in one whole season only 43 key errors in ALL THE PL MATCHES.  I repeat 43 KEY ERRORS IN ONE WHOLE PL SEASON!

In Mike Riley’s dreamland they only got it completely wrong 43 times in 380 matches in total. That is an average of around 1 key error every match day. I have it black on white in their report. I completely fell of my chair while reading that.  This number is so ridiculous that it is mind blowing.

I think not one football supporter will believe the numbers from Riley from the PGMO. And yet I see them black on white.  I think the average will be more around 1 key error per match and should be around 380 key errors over a season.

But 43 is what Mike Riley believes it is. I think in match 50 he himself made more than those 43 on his own. How can you take people serious who have stuck their head so deep in the sand.

And of course if you believe this, then you get what we get now: that nothing is being done about it.

Sweet dreams, Mr. Riley. Dream of your “perfect” referees. But the clock is ticking and one day the alarm will go off. Alarm bells that have been going off over here for years now. But you still are lying in your bed firmly asleep.

Wake up, Mr. Riley. Not before it is too late, because in fact it is already too late.

26 Replies to “We all live in a PGMO dreamland…. well not all”

  1. In next article(s) we will go in to detail of those key decisions and then compare them with the Untold findings for that season.

  2. How did you get your data? I am 101 percent sure that PGMOL will deny this. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

  3. Tope,
    To be clear the % score is from our reviews. But if the PGMO would use our reviews as basis for the PGMO quotation that is what it would be.
    In the next articles I will go in to detail on their numbers about a season we covered in our reviews.
    I might even add a picture of the report 🙂

  4. If you refer to the 43 wrong key decisions…yes it really is. I think that I will try to add a picture of this 🙂

  5. Walter,

    Veeeery Intereeeeeesting!

    Unfortunately also totally deniable by the PGMO.

    As you know I add in a table at the head of the referee previews showing the important decisions the referees have got wrong so far – by important decisions, I mean second yellow cards, straight red cards, penalties and goals. To date this season the total in Arsenal games is twenty-six.

    Of these five have benefitted Arsenal and twenty-one have benefitted our opponents, that’s nearly two game changing decisions a game counting against us. There is no wonder that we are so far behind Chelsea.

    Yes we haven’t played that well at times but, taking our last game as an example, if Mr Dowd had done his job properly and sent off Williams at the start of the second half I’m sure that we wouldn’t have lost the game.

  6. a questions i often ask myself, and havent been able to answer…

    how do i continue to support arsenal and boycott the PGMOL and EPL?

  7. Thank god we get the best referees officiating games in the PL

    I wonder what the scores would be the next tier down

    And the tier below that

    And the tier below that

  8. The FA and its monopoly match officials provider PGMO are a disgrace to honesty in sport. The is no place for their sham.

  9. Walter, you are a dangerous man to some.
    It is clear that mike Riley, or his controllers are on a par with Blatter and co.
    Don’t think any one apart from Riley and perhaps Chelsea FC believe this lack of errors, not even Man Utd any more. Doubt if even scudamore believes these figures.
    Riley’s,days are numbered even in the corrupt world of the premier league, the guy isn’t even clever, just weak , just incompetent, and just there.
    But of course it is all wengers fault.

  10. Mandy, good comment, but is Riley the kingpin or the front man for someone else?

    My feeling is that he started as his own kingpin, but has gradually become useful to others.

    If so; should he become a lame duck, he will be discarded when someone behind the scene considers the timing appropriate and, when a “suitable” replacement can be shoehorned into place. Unless – the risk to the anonymous person is too great – then he/she/they will cut all links & leave Riley to face the music!

  11. Looking forward to the next article Walter. Riley must just sit in his room and invent these figures, since they have no relation to reality.

  12. Although as has been written above, PGMO will go their own way and just ignore these figures, it is harder each week to believe that they are not watching and waiting to see what Walter and co do next.

    The point is that from day one, when we had a little bash at their web site they reacted – by taking their web site down.

    When we pointed out that Wiki had a comment about how their were controversies in relation to PGMO, that article was changed within a day or so.

    There are dozens of such incidents, and they might all be coincidence, but I think this is pushing coincidence too far.

    They know we are out here.

  13. In terms of Wikipedia, if two (or more) parties have revolving edits of a page, at some point this gets noticed and is subject to investigation. It is not necessarily true that PGMOL is the final arbitrator as to what consitutes acceptable content on a page about them. It has happened where people related to the subject of the Wikipedia article were eventually censured for editing the content of others.

  14. I know that bad referring has cost us in the league and I will add, in Europe coz I will never forget that second yellow card VP got against Barca for kicking the ball few seconds after the whistle. Today almost any player gets away with it. Or the 1st of Andelect’s goal (Which was offside by a margin) in the last game we played. Now I don’t see how this will not affect the players and I’m beginning to see that it has cost us more than points but confidence in some instances. I look forward to the new article.

  15. Very interesting winds come your way and so grateful that you manage to be able to redirect them our way 😉

    Does PGMO stand for ‘Professional Gang Manipulation Organization’??

    The practice of manipulating or the state of being manipulated: The dealer’s manipulations could have removed cards from the deck.

    They certainly seem to have a way with tricks with cards and to tilt the playing field whichever way suits them.

    WHAT A DISGRACEFUL GROUP of BANDITS.

  16. A little warning to you my dear readers as I detect that our spam filters seems to hit some trouble. As we have been attacked before I sure hope this isn’t the first sign of it. So if you experience that the site loads slow just mention it if you can. Thanks.

  17. It’s just that on previous occasions we first had a sudden rise in spam comments just before the real attack. And that is just what I noticed this morning. Hope it is a coincidence….

  18. the standard of refereeing has been getting worse not better, anything to highlight this has got to be good.Personally I think its money rather than incompetance but anyway.

  19. For sure its not incompetence!!!! It is a premeditated, exceptionally well organized, directive to miss-perform in the expense of certain teams with an ‘in-house’ (PGMOL) Agenda!

  20. Bjt, think Riley is a Utd supporter who became fergies personal gimp, but in doing so, showed his weakness of character and that he could be bought, as he undoubtedly has been.
    I would be wary of him, seems the corrupt are at their worst just before they are exposed or removed, one last fling….we witness the same with FIFA.
    Walter, have any of your sources ever indicated a bias against Arsenal or Wenger?

  21. arse_or_brain
    November 15, 2014 at 9:19 am

    ha! but what do you mean? the referees here are fantastic… gilberto ball to hand..FOUL! ..vidic arm to ball..NO PENALTY ..success story.

  22. Mandy – I agree about the Riley & Red Nose relationship.

    But I suspect someone else with a specific agenda in mind came along later and realized that he (or they) could use the situation to advantage. This person (or persons) would also have taken the trouble to developed favorable relationships with the media controllers.

  23. Hunter13 – the worst was JT with his two handed save in the box that was not seen by the Ref. He has got away with more handballs than players wives!

  24. @Mandy Dodd
    November 15, 2014 at 10:13 am

    “…think Riley is a Utd supporter who became fergies personal gimp…”

    That just about sums it up in itself 🙂 🙂

  25. @Menace
    November 15, 2014 at 1:54 pm

    “…He has got away with more handballs than players wives!”

    HAHAHA HA thats got me rolling around!!! OMG

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *