Who’s the number one amongst the refs? « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade

With over 2000 followers: Untold Arsenal on Twitter @UntoldArsenal

By Walter Broeckx

Do you want to know how the refs have done so far this season? Well I will try to give you some details including another graphic of the score each ref has got so far.

So we must remember that unlike in school where you just have to get 50% to be successful, football is more demanding. No if 50% were the measure for top refs we could put a real blind man in the middle of the pitch and the chance that he makes the correct decision would be around 50%.

No, top refs are refs that are trained, chosen and selected because they should be better than the average ref.

So for them a score of 70% is the minimum. It has to be something between 70 and 80% to speak of a ref that has a reasonable game. Not great just acceptable. Any score above 80% is very good. And a score above 90% is almost unbelievable. Then you can go home really satisfied with your game.

To just show you how difficult it is to score above 90% I can say that only 1 (one) ref managed to do this so far this season. And it was Phil Dowd in the game Liverpool – Sunderland. Almost no mistakes made in that game (just 4 wrong calls!) and getting all the major decisions correct. Last season if my memory serves me right we also had only one ref with a score above 90%. It was Mike Jones in that terrible home game against West Bromwich Albion which we lost 2-3. Sorry to bring that up again.

But who is our top ref this season?

Well, well it is Phil Dowd. And yes I know that he gave two goals to Manchester United that were offside but this was down to his assistant who made a mess of things. But even then he managed to score above the 70% in total and in his other games he also got high scores.

Second best is Mike Jones with just under 80%. And also getting more than 70% are Dean, Mason, Marinner and Friend. So that is 6 refs that score high enough to keep on working in the PL.

The other refs like Atkinson, Halsey, Probert, Walton, Clattenburg and Atwell didn’t score well enough so far this season. And also world cup ref Webb didn’t manage to score above 70 %. He is close to it but not enough for the moment.  The scores are based on 34 reviews of 13 refs so far this season and the total average score of all the refs together is 70,09%. And this is in fact the minimum score for refs that they should have.

In fact having an average score of less than 70% is something that cannot just be blamed on the refs. No, it is the responsibility of those who select the refs. It is the responsibility of those who appoint the refs. It is the responsibility of the PGMOL.

—————————————–

The Christmas gift for the fan with (almost) everything

—————————————–

——————————-

Untold Arsenal – the (fairly) complete index