Numbering the refs performances: Dowd is the best ref in the league!!! « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News, supporting the club, the players and the manager
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By Walter Broeckx
In the last weeks I have tried to shed a first light on the scores of the refs and I have done this by focussing on the Total average score the refs have received after our reviews. Today I will try to go a bit deeper in this analysis and see if there are some different things that we can see if we look at the 3 major numbers that are hidden under the total average score. This is based on 42 games in the season so far and based on all the games we reviewed.
So I made the average score for each ref in the category “Overall decisions”, “Weight decisions” and “Important decisions”.
The overall decisions is just counting if the ref got it right or wrong. This includes all the decisions whether they are important or not. Just adding 1 and 1 one could say. This could well be about an important penalty decision or the average little push in the middle of the field. And when I added the numbers of each ref I got this league table from the refs.
| Nr. | Ref | Overall score % |
|
1 |
Dowd |
85,38 |
|
2 |
Friend |
81,40 |
|
3 |
Mason |
81,16 |
|
4 |
Jones |
79,80 |
|
5 |
Dean |
77,21 |
|
6 |
Clattenburg |
76,18 |
|
7 |
Atkinson |
73,97 |
|
8 |
Taylor |
73,17 |
|
9 |
Atwell |
72,16 |
|
10 |
Webb |
71,74 |
|
11 |
Marinner |
70,39 |
|
12 |
Halsey |
69,09 |
|
13 |
Probert |
66,60 |
|
14 |
Walton |
63,77 |
So in first place we find (is he the oldest of them all?) ref Phil Dowd. Who could ever have thought that after last season Untold Arsenal would put ref Dowd in first place in a table. Well the numbers are what they are. Now of course you could say that this is not the most important table. Because we have given some weight to some decisions and when we take the overall numbers and add the weight that we have given to the decisions we get the following league table. We named it the Weight table.
| Nr. | Ref | Weight score % |
|
1 |
Dowd |
84,8 |
|
2 |
Mason |
80,47 |
|
3 |
Friend |
79,55 |
|
4 |
Jones |
79,44 |
|
5 |
Dean |
77,82 |
|
6 |
Atwell |
76,76 |
|
7 |
Clattenburg |
73,54 |
|
8 |
Probert |
71,1 |
|
9 |
Atkinson |
70,09 |
|
10 |
Webb |
69,46 |
|
11 |
Taylor |
69,23 |
|
12 |
Marinner |
69,2 |
|
13 |
Halsey |
66,9 |
|
14 |
Walton |
64,9 |
A few refs switch places in this table but on top we still find our old pal Phil Dowd at the top of the refs. And this table is a bit more important because this adds already a little bit of weight to the importance of the decisions. But still a ref can make up a lot of ground by calling a lot of correct fouls in the middle of the field and messing up somewhere else.
And then we move on to the most important table. That ‘s why I called it the “Important decisions table”. Because this is the table that decides the outcome of the game the most. I know when are messes up in the middle of the field he can cost you the game but in the next table I only focussed on the major decisions. Gave the ref a goal or not? Did he give a penalty when needed or did he give one for a dive? Did he give a red card or not? You now the sort of decisions that can be seen on the score board at the end of the game in the final score.
So after 42 games in the PL this season we have this table for the refs when it comes to important decisions:
| Nr, | Ref | Average score important decisions % |
|
1 |
Dowd |
83,42 |
|
2 |
Jones |
77,92 |
|
3 |
Mason |
73,1 |
|
4 |
Dean |
71,89 |
|
5 |
Webb |
67,85 |
|
6 |
Probert |
65,4 |
|
7 |
Clattenburg |
62,66 |
|
8 |
Friend |
61,9 |
|
9 |
Walton |
61,65 |
|
10 |
Marinner |
59,4 |
|
11 |
Atwell |
58,59 |
|
12 |
Atkinson |
57,41 |
|
13 |
Halsey |
55,24 |
|
14 |
Taylor |
53,33 |
And well I cannot but admit that this season Dowd has looked like another ref. He is on top of all the 3 (and the 4th which I gave a few weeks ago) tables that we can come up with this season. So he must be doing it right this season. He is the only one that comes up with a score of over 80% in all the refs tables. I sincerely hope that he continues this form when he does an Arsenal game.
In another article I will go one step further with all these numbers. And I will try to make a kind of profile of the refs. A way of telling you how a ref does his games and maybe a manual to keep an eye on how a ref operates if he wants to tilt the pitch in one or the other direction.
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