EPL Referee Review 2012 – Regional – North East

Untold Arsenal has a team of qualified referees who have reviewed more than 40% of the EPL games from last season. The reviews themselves were based on full match video footage with the advantage of video technology features such as slow motion and pause.

By reviewing those 155 games we have made a database of more than 7000 decisions that have been judged by our panel of dedicated and qualified referees.

The numbers you will see are based on those decisions and those reviewed games.

Teams include:

Newcastle UnitedSunderland

Not a very crowded region when it comes to PL teams with only two fierce rivals in it. We just stayed under the overall average of the games we done so not that bad certainly if we keep in mind that nobody really expected Newcastle that high in the PL. Once it became clear that they were in for a spot in the top 4 the TV stations started giving them more time in the live games. So we ended up doing 16 games from Newcastle which is 42% of their games and even from Sunderland we managed to do 14 games or around 37%.

If we look at the unweighted competency numbers we see that they scored slightly worse than the overall average. This means that they had more wrong calls in their game. A total score of 71,68%. So not really good. If we add weight to the decisions we see that the numbers goes down slightly to 71,25%. So again nothing really to be proud of for the refs.

No need for video refs in the North East is seems. They get to a very high score of 97,26% of correct given goals. A great score for the refs! And the same goes for the offside decisions. They really are better judged when teams from the North East were involved. If we look at the overall fouls we see that this is slightly worse than the overall average in the league.

But to make this up we see that in the games from the teams from the North East the penalty decisions are much better than the overall average. Almost 10% better!

But when we look at the red cards we suddenly see a change in the numbers. Only 13,64 % of the red cards were given or better said were justified! This is too low. Unacceptable low. And it is not that the refs don’t know how to give cards because if we look at the yellow cards we get a different picture. Almost 6% of the given yellow cards were more correct than the overall league average.

Some amazing numbers to be honest.

Let us see at the bias numbers for the teams from the North East. We can see that there is (once again Mr. Riley) a visible home bias. If we compare this home bias in the unweighted numbers with the numbers from the teams in the North West we see that the overall bias is only 1,786 compared to the 3.230 in the North West. One could say that the home bias is only half as big compared to the numbers from the North West. If we look at the away numbers we see that they suffer a kind of bias when away from home that goes against them. Again if we compare with the numbers from the North West we see that this is higher than the bias the NW suffer away from home. (1.062 versus 0.678 – again almost the double)

Compared to the overall score the home bias is slightly lower, but very slightly. The away bias is better than the league average. So that is some good news for the teams from the North East when they go to play away from home.

But there is also some other good news to tell for the teams from the North East. Because if we put weight on the decisions we see that the away bias sinks down to -0.187. And this is rather getting close to the zero score which it should be if there was no bias. And the wrong decisions in favour show that this also goes up when we put weight on the decisions.If we look at the league average the score from the teams from the North East is looking better when we put the weight on the decisions.

A conclusion could be that they win from a home bias and suffer from an away bias but that for the important decisions the away bias goes down to a very low score.

With only two teams in this region this is a very easy graphic.

If we look at it unweighted we see that the score from Sunderland suddenly is under zero. The Newcastle score is a positive bias. but it is lower than what we have seen in the Norht West.

If we put weight on to it we see that the score from Sunderland suddenly goes above zero. Newcastle keeps a positive score but it is a bit lower than the unweighted score. Compared to the North West this is not as high when we look at the top teams there.

Let us move on to the referees who did their games. And if you remember this graphic from the North West we suddenly see that Peter Walton who seemed to have a bad score with lots of calls going against the teams from the North West suddenly becomes the opposite for the teams from the North East. What is standing out in this table is that there are 9 refs who have a negative bias score for the teams from the North East on the 13 refs we had in their games. So the chance they meet a ref that can have a negative influence is rather big. The chance is almost 70%! But the refs who give them some favours are having a rather high score in the favour of those teams. The points are more extreme compared to the scores from the teams from the North West.

And if we put weight on to the decisions the score remains virtually the same. In order of the graphic I mean. Not on the score as the numbers rise a lot. Again to very extreme levels compared to the teams from the North West.

The final conclusion:

There seems to be a small regional bias in favour of the North East. Not as out spoken compared with the teams from the North West who clearly are more favoured by the refs in general.

If we look at the refs we can say that at least 9 out of 13 refs gave no favours to the teams from the North East during the season in some way or the other. That is 70% of the refs who did no favours to those teams. But still there is a slightly favourable trend in the numbers for the teams from the North East. So when they have a ref in their favour it seems that he is willing to open all registers in favour of the teams from the North East.

Next article in this series: Is there any bias towards teams from the Midlands?