The final ref review of the season 3: is the Untold ref review biased? « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade
INDIVIDUAL PERFORMANCES OF THE REFS AND SOME BIAS FROM MY PART… OR NOT?
By Walter Broeckx
In this article I will try to find an answer to two questions. The one is linked with my bias and the other is how did each ref do and was his score good enough if he would be a ref in another country.
So the first table I show is the table in which I range the refs according to their results in the games we had.
| Pos | Ref | Total | Games | Score |
| 1 | Clattenburg | 305 | 4 | 76,25 |
| 2 | Atwell | 149 | 2 | 74,50 |
| 3 | Mason | 218 | 3 | 72,67 |
| 4 | Atkinson | 436 | 6 | 72,67 |
| 5 | Mariner | 203 | 3 | 67,67 |
| 6 | Friend | 134 | 2 | 67,00 |
| 7 | Oliver | 133 | 2 | 66,50 |
| 8 | Halsey | 194 | 3 | 64,67 |
| 9 | Jones | 252 | 4 | 63,00 |
| 10 | Dowd | 291 | 5 | 58,20 |
| 11 | Taylor | 55 | 1 | 55,00 |
| 12 | Probert | 104 | 2 | 52,00 |
| 13 | Dean | 207 | 4 | 51,75 |
| 14 | Foy | 255 | 5 | 51,00 |
| 15 | Walton | 99 | 2 | 49,50 |
| 16 | Webb | 86 | 2 | 43,00 |
So this is the score of each ref and I have put them in order of their average score in all the games they did Arsenal this season. Going from the best at the top to the worst at the bottom.
So the best ref in my eyes was Clattenburg. He can come to collect his prize at Untold Towers. Don’t know if Tony has something for him in his closet. But be prepared if he comes to claim his prize, Tony. (A bottle of Crabbies maybe? – Tony)
As you all know by now the average score a ref must get in Belgium is 70%. And if we take this in to these numbers you can see that only 4 refs qualify for next season. Clattenburg, Atwell, Mason and Atkinson.
Take notice of who finishes with the lowest score… Howard Webb. So it looks that to be successful in England and in the Fifa rankings you must make sure you don’t follow the Fifa rules and guidelines. I don’t know but this should ring a bell somehow I would say.
So you can look for your favourite ref in the table and see how much they got on average during this season. And I would really ask you to look for ref Foy. And look at how low his position is in this table.
Now let us take a look at the fact if these numbers are based on bias from my part. If I would be very biased in my ref reviews you should see a pattern. You should see that the more games we have won under a ref the higher his average score should be. So I tried to look at this and I made another table. A table based on how many games we have won under a certain ref. And in the next table I ranged the refs based on the more games we won under the ref the higher his place in the table.
| Pos gained points | Pos average score | Ref | Total | Games | Score | W | D | L |
| 1 | 14 | Foy | 255 | 5 | 51,00 | 4 | 0 | 1 |
| 2 | 1 | Clattenburg | 305 | 4 | 76,25 | 4 | 0 | 0 |
| 3 | 9 | Jones | 252 | 4 | 63,00 | 3 | 1 | 0 |
| 4 | 3 | Mason | 218 | 3 | 72,67 | 3 | 0 | 0 |
| 5 | 8 | Halsey | 194 | 3 | 64,67 | 2 | 0 | 1 |
| 6 | 5 | Mariner | 203 | 3 | 67,67 | 2 | 1 | 0 |
| 7 | 15 | Walton | 99 | 2 | 49,50 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| 8 | 2 | Atwell | 149 | 2 | 74,50 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 9 | 4 | Atkinson | 436 | 6 | 72,67 | 1 | 4 | 1 |
| 10 | 6 | Friend | 134 | 2 | 67,00 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 11 | 12 | Probert | 104 | 2 | 52,00 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 12 | 13 | Dean | 207 | 4 | 51,75 | 1 | 0 | 3 |
| 13 | 16 | Webb | 86 | 2 | 43,00 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 14 | 7 | Oliver | 133 | 2 | 66,50 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| 15 | 10 | Dowd | 291 | 5 | 58,20 | 0 | 4 | 1 |
| 16 | 11 | Taylor | 55 | 1 | 55,00 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
And now you see the refs that has brought us most points first and so on down to the refs that have brought us least points. The first column is the position based on the average points gained. And right next to it you can see the position he got when I did the reviews.
And then to my and hopefully your surprise we got the most points this season in the games under ref Foy. And yet he finished 14th in the average score table. So if I were to be biased and just give high points when we win then how could Foy end up in 14th place on the average points per game?
Another example is ref Jones. Only 9th in the average score table but he was the third best ref when it came to winning games. A ref that has made me furious this season was ref Mason. You know the ref in our home game against Everton. The one that Cesc asked something about who actually paid him. Well despite me being furious I did give him the points he should have got and he ended up rather high in the table.
This table clearly shows that I did give my points based on what I have seen from the ref in the games and not based on the final score. And I must admit that the nearer the season came to an end the more worried I got about this table. Because if the position of the refs would have been the same I would have to admit that I did show a big bias. But the way the two tables are mixed up I can say now that I really managed to do what I promised myself at the start of the season and that was to look at the ref and not at the score.
And yes there still will be some kind of bias in my reviewing of the ref. A biased known but I can prove now that my bias didn’t get in the way of assessing the refs in a way that can be called unbiased and not done with the intent of : “we won this game so I will give him a high score” or “we lost the game so I will blame the ref and give him a low score”.
Look out for the next article I would say. We come next to the issue of whether it all evened out at the end of the season.
Half the penalties in Arsenal games were wrongly given this season!