Thursday, November 18th, 2010 « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger in all he does

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By Walter Broeckx

So here we are after about 1/3 of the season in the EPL and maybe a good time, with the (f*****g) international break this week to take a look at how the refs have done so far. To start with I give you a view on the games I have taken on in my weekly review and the points the refs have got. And I have tried to bring some colour in to it so you can see who got most points,  who was in second place and who got the third most points. And in red the lowest score.

	ref	cards	penalty	goals	other	total
Liverpool – Arsenal	Atkinson	66		100		83
Arsenal – Blackpool	Jones	50	100	100		83
Blackburn – Arsenal	Foy	50		100	17	56
Arsenal – Bolton	Atwell	50	75	100	50	68
Sunderland – Arsenal	Dowd	57	66	100	30	50
CC Tottenham – Arsenal	Probert	71	100	80	0	75
Arsenal – WBA	Oliver	87	100	100	50	88
Chelsea – Arsenal	Dean	28	50	50	14	30
Arsenal – Birmingham	Atkinson	50	100	100	60	68
Man City – Arsenal	Clattenburg	100	100	100	50	93
Newcastle – Arsenal CC	Mariner	60	100	100	0	62
Arsenal – West Ham	Jones	66	50	100	16	50
Arsenal – Newcastle	Dean	83		100	0	60
Wolverhampton – Arsenal	Halsey	60		100	54	61
Everton – Arsenal	Webb	33	100	66	33	46

When there are no points mentioned this means that there was nothing to report in this category

If we just take the total points then we see that the best ref so far this season has been ref Clattenburg when we played at Manchester City. I think he had a very good game overall that day. As I had said at the start of my review a score from 90% means that the ref has had an excellent game.  In fact in ref circles they consider this as an almost perfect game. Ref Clattenburg had 93% in this game so one could say that humanly spoken he had a perfect game. He only missed one blatant tackle from Dejongh on Cesc when he gave no foul. So the best performance in a top game I have seen for a long time. And every ref knows that you will never get 100% right in a game as this is impossible unless you are a robot.

In second place we have ref Oliver who witnessed our home defeat against WBA with 88%, which is also an almost perfect game. And joint 3^rd is Atkinson (who had a lesser game against Birmingham) and Jones(who also had a lesser game against West Ham) who did Arsenal – Blackpool with 83% each.

The lowest scores are for ref Dean when he did Chelsea – Arsenal with 30%. Webb at our game against Everton had only 46%. So in fact two Fifa refs have very bad scores.

But as has been remarked, this total score gives an indication but it doesn’t say it all. Decisions that have a direct impact on the result are more important than giving a yellow card or not, although this too could have a major impact further in the game. But let us first stick with the goals.

If we look at the goals we can see that most of the goals (for and against) are fine and within the rules.  There are only 3 goals that I think shouldn’t have been given.  The equaliser from Tottenham in the Carling cup was offside. So it could have saved us the extra time but did not affect the general outcome.

In the game Chelsea – Arsenal ref Dean missed a blatant foul on Song from which Chelsea scored. Chelsea scored another goal so we will never know if this changed the game but I think with 5 minutes to go and 0-0 on the score board we would not have ran forward as we did.

The other goal which was not valid if you ask me was the goal from Everton but this didn’t affect the final outcome. So in all just the one really goal that shouldn’t have counted and the ref was Mr. Dean.

If you look at the penalty decisions it is a fact that in most games the refs did rather well. Yes we had the usual miss from… Mr. Dean against Chelsea. We should have had another penalty against Sunderland but we missed one and we wouldn’t have missed two or would we?  So also in this department of keeping the records the usual suspect (Dean) but for the rest not many match deciding penalties were wrong at the end of the day.

If we look at the cards there was only one ref (Clattenburg at City) who did what I thought should be done, how it should be done. And I really wonder if the fact that he made a few errors last season in the same game, was the reason that he was so focussed and sharp in this game. But handing out cards is sometimes personal and can depend on each ref on the field. But some things have to be punished no matter what and those are things I try to focus on most of the time.

In the “other” score sheet I put in what I can’t include elsewhere.  This can go from blatant fouls that not have been given, to refs who are doing things that a ref shouldn’t do on the football field.  And yes I know it is boring but some refs managed to do a lot of things wrong and again the same name comes forward (Mr. Dean) who managed to mess up so much he got everything wrong in this category in one game.

But he wasn’t alone in this. I know some of the points I gave or took away from some refs are based on technical errors and wrong gestures and movement. Those are things that most of the fans don’t know about unless you are a ref yourself and you know how it should be done.

But these things can decide a game. Imagine if the score on Sunday had been 0-0 and Webb had have done his little act with Sagna and we would have lost the game. Maybe looking at it as a ref those are the worst things. Because I know as a ref you can miss a penalty, a foul, a handball,… because someone else is blocking your view. But making technical errors is something that should not be done by professional refs in the EPL as they should be basics to all the refs. And if a lower league ref makes such an error you can forgive him but refs who make a living out of it should be trained in these situations and not make such mistakes.

So in general one can say that if a ref has a score of +80 he has had a great game. The EPL is not easy to referee and when you manage to get around a score like that you done good. Between 60 and 80 you have had an okay game. Not great, not bad, just a bit mediocre. And everything under 60 is not good for an EPL ref.

If I use this scale on the refs so far this season we had four excellent refs in our 15 games in the EPL and the Carling Cup. Six refs were okay but also we had five refs that have performed badly. I do think those five bad refs are a bit too much as this means that every third game the ref was bad so far.

But then again not every game is the same and refs have bad days. The problem is not one bad game however, but when you have a bad day each game you do. Then it could mean that the level is too high for the ref. Or that you are too biased. But to know this I should be able to look inside the refs head and this is something I cannot do for now.

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