Many refs make one wrong call every ten minutes. But when does this figure start to look suspicious? Part 1 of our new enquiry « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade

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By Walter Broeckx

This is an attempt to get a bit further in our ref reviews and most of all in finding out what is hidden behind the numbers we gather in the reviews.

So in this article I will go and dig a bit further in the wrong decisions that refs have made. From all the 71 games we have reviewed so far, (not just the Arsenal games),  I have been counting the wrong decisions. And in the next table you can see how many wrong decisions the ref have made and how many they make on average in a game.

Ref	Games	Total wrong calls
Walton	4	60
Atkinson	6	62
Dean	7	88
Dowd	6	49
Halsey	3	47
Jones	6	73
Mason	3	47
Probert	5	78
Webb	8	111
Atwell	3	18
Clattenburg	6	71
Marinner	4	62
Friend	2	20
Taylor	2	30
Foy	3	54
Oliver	2	15
Moss	1	4
Total	71	889

Of course it is obvious the more games you have been reviewed the higher the number of wrong calls will be. So Webb who was reviewed more will certainly have more numbers than Moss who we only have done once.

So to find out how bad a ref really is, or better said how many mistakes he makes during a game we have to see how many wrong calls he makes on average per game. And this we can find in the next table

Ref	Games	Av wrong calls/game
Walton	4	15
Atkinson	6	10
Dean	7	13
Dowd	6	8
Halsey	3	16
Jones	6	12
Mason	3	16
Probert	5	16
Webb	8	14
Atwell	3	9
Clattenburg	6	12
Marinner	4	16
Friend	2	10
Taylor	2	15
Foy	3	18
Oliver	2	8
Moss	1	4

Now this table is more interesting because now we can have a better view on the refs and how many times they get it wrong in a game. And so we see that Foy makes on average 18 mistakes in a game. This is the same as saying that he makes one mistake every 5 minutes. I don’t know how long you will keep your job if you made a mistake every 5 minutes? Now I’m not wanting to single Foy out because there are a lot of refs who make more than 10 mistakes per game. Meaning they make one mistake every 10 minutes.

Now we all can be thinking what is wrong with the refs but still this doesn’t tell the whole story in a way. Because if we, for once, use the “it evens out” theory that we keep hearing this would mean that each team would suffer half of the wrong calls those refs make.

Now I will try to calculate how many wrong calls a team can expect from a ref. Because if he makes on average 10 wrong calls in a game this would mean (from the “it evens out” theory) that each team would suffer 5 wrong calls from this ref.

Of course I calculated this also and this is what we get when we do this

Ref	Games	Av wrong calls/game	Av wrong calls/team
Walton	4	15		8
Atkinson	6	10		5
Dean	7	13		6
Dowd	6	8		4
Halsey	3	16		8
Jones	6	12		6
Mason	3	16		8
Probert	5	16		8
Webb	8	14		7
Atwell	3	9		5
Clattenburg	6	12		6
Marinner	4	16		8
Friend	2	10		5
Taylor	2	15		8
Foy	3	18		9
Oliver	2	8		4
Moss	1	4		2

And now my readers the pictures becomes really interesting. Because now I could calculate in fact from which point a ref starts to become suspicious in a way. Because if a ref makes mistakes in good faith it would mean that each team would suffer in the same way from his mistakes. So if you go above the number in the last column it means that the ref somewhat is doing something more wrong than he usually is doing. And on the other hand when you get a lower number of wrong calls than the ref is normally having it means that the ref is acting very nice towards that team.

So the next step I will take on for now is to see how things stand for each ref and see when they cross the line of making too many or too few mistakes. Mmmm I think this could lead us to some interesting numbers.

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