Who has the correct numbers? Mr. Elleray or Untold? « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade

By Walter Broeckx

There has been a little debate going on about the refs in the media. And I was attracted by the words or  the English Football Association referees’ committee chairman David Elleray.

Mr. Elleray said and I quote this from the media:

“Last season in the Premier League 98 per cent of offside decisions were correct. I would defy any manager to claim 98 per cent of his selection decisions which he has time to think about were correct or that any player achieved 98 per cent success rate with his shots, tackles or passing the ball. Two per cent of so-called mistakes attracted huge publicity.”

Now I don’t know where Mr.  Elleray got this number from. Does the FA and the English Football Association Referees do research on this? Because if they do this then Mr. Elleray surely would have the numbers of wrong decisions on goals. And on penalties. So please Mr. Elleray after having said A (wrong offside calls) give us now B (wrong goal decisions) and C (wrong penalty decisions).

I think it is a must that they come out in the open and open say that they do the research and have the numbers and then given them.

Because if they don’t do the research…how can he come out in the open and say such a thing? How can he claim the 98% right offside decisions? I know the PGMOL work with an organisation that looks at how the ref runs in games and how many decisions they take. But they have confirmed me a while back that they don’t look at the fact if the decisions were correct or not.

So does the FA, the PGMOL, the EFAR check the decisions? Then they need to come out in the open with it.

But as the regular readers know by now we on Untold do check the refs and their decisions. And by any coincidence we do check the offside decisions. It is somewhat a little number hidden somewhere between all the other numbers we do check them.

But this checking is happening in the following way, just like the other things: if we cannot see enough evidence that the ruling was wrong we count them as correct.

And  I must say that most of the rulings are considered correct. And this because …well… the replays we can see of those calls are around 1 replay on average per game. Sometimes 2 and in a seldom case we have 3 replays. And the replays sometimes show the ref is correct and sometimes not. But on many occasions we cannot really check the decision and then we just count them as correct.

So what do we have on the offside decisions so far this season? Do we have a 2 % wrong calls? Well I thought it would be interesting to compare what we have found so far and see if we come near the 98% correct decisions that are claimed by Mr. Elleray.

Game	Ref	Offside
Newcastle-Arsenal	Walton	100
City-Swansea	Dean	100
Stoke-Chelsea	Halsey	100
Liverpool-Sunderland	Dowd	100
Arsenal – Liverpool	Atkinson	80
WBA – Utd	Jones	100
Man U – Tottenham	Probert	100
Chelsea – WBA	Mason	83,33
Man Utd- Arsenal	Webb	85,71
Bolton – Man City	Jones	100
Tottenham – Man City	Dowd	100
Liverpool – Bolton	Probert	100
Arsenal -Swansea	Atwell	100
Chelsea – Norwich	Jones	100
Man City – Wigan	Atkinson	100
Stoke – Liverpool	Clattenburg	100
Sunderland – Stoke	Probert	100
Bolton – Man U	Marinner	100
Blackburn- Arsenal	Marinner	75
Fulham – Blackburn	Webb	100
Man U – Chelsea	Dowd	50
Fulham – Man City	Clattenburg	100
Liverpool – Wolves	Friend	100
Arsenal – Bolton	Clattenburg	83,33
Tottenham – Liverpool	Jones	100
Chelsea – Swansea	Dean	71,43
Stoke – Man U	Walton	100
Everton – Liverpool	Atkinson	100
Total		2528,80
Number of games		28,00
Average % correct		90,31

Now and I must repeat that at least an estimation of around 60 to 70% of the offside decisions are not really to be checked by our ref reviewers because we just don’t have the opportunity to review them like they should be reviewed. And as a result we count them as correct.

But with this for the ref very favourable point of view we end up with only 90,31% of correct offside decisions in the 28 games that we have reviewed so far this season.

And offside decisions can be very important in games. We all remember how MU won with 2 offside goals against Chelsea a few weeks ago. And we also have lost several points when linesman made the wrong decisions. So in such an important matter we should make sure that the decisions are almost perfect.

Mr. Elleray claimed 98% correct and if we would get that number then we all would be very happy with that. But after reviewing 28 games so far this season we come up with a bit lower number. We can prove our numbers. We can prove that it is only 90,31% so far in the games we reviewed.  And as said I really think the number would be lower if we could have access to all camera angles in all games. But can Mr. Elleray back up his claim of 98%?

If not then this is another example on how people put up a number just out of nothing and then by just using their own name and authority they try to make the people believe it is correct.

So how lucky we are that we can check the claim of Mr. Elleray with the real numbers on the field. And they don’t look as nice as Mr. Elleray tried to paint them. Time to speak up completely now Mr. Elleray: DO YOU CHECK THE CORRECT DECISIONS?

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