Arsenal 2nd, Chelsea 3rd, Everton 4th, Liverpool 5th - How much of a difference did bad refereeing make this season?
All year long we’ve been bitching about refereeing decisions going against our clubs. Sometimes we resort to bitching about how refereeing decisions unfairly help other clubs (witness SAF’s comment on Arsenal’s late equaliser against Villa, or Grant’s whinge about referees helping United win the title).
Right Result, since the start of the 2006/2007, have been tracking each Premier League game and answering the question: “how would the Premier League look if refs got all the decisions right?”
Last season Arsenal would have finished 3rd, Villa 6th, Tottenham 10th and West ham relegated. This year the changes are not so drastic, with the 3 relegated sides still relegated and the biggest jumps being that of Fulham from 17 to 13th (with Wigan dropping down).
It’s at the top of the table that things get interesting. Arsenal and Chelsea swap places, proving to an extent how much Chelsea have benefited from dubious refereeing decisions this season (Arsenal apparently have suffered more than most two seasons in a row, something that’s going to give Arsenal fans more reason to be annoying). The biggest surprise though, has been Everton and Liverpool swapping spots. The league table shows Liverpool being 11 points ahead of Everton but the Right Result table puts them a point ahead. Everton screwed over and Liverpool getting help from referees? Who would have thunk it?
And what would have happened to Torres, Gerrard and Rafa if Liverpool were in the UEFA Cup? Would Barry still be interested in going to Anfield?
See the Right Result table here for yourself.
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Discussion - 20 Responses
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Who’s to say your take on ref’s decisions is any less bias than those of the referees themselves? How many minor fouls have you conveniently overlooked as it doesn’t quite paint the picture you wanted it to? How many obvious handballs have you neglected to mention? Admit who you support and we’ll see if there is any inherent bias in your deductions.
This is interesting because I read one on SkySports opta (at easter)that said Liverpool would have been ahead of United and that Arsenal would have been 11 points clear.
Either way these tables are stupid because they dont take into consideration Red Cards (because they can’t) and when teams rest players because they are comfortable with their league position.
He’s a man u glory hunter. He’s never even been to manchester.
I think Chelsea are a great example I mean had they not got a luckey first goal then they wouldn’t sit back and defend. Its impossible to say what could have been, for all we know had Liverpool got the right decisions in the Chelsea game they could have went on to win the league
we dont know.
uh yah……..this SEEMS so biased…u really think there were
NO bad calls in favor of united and that united played such good futbol that they just pranced on by and even the fouls against them didn’t affect there greatness. What fouls were in favor of chelsea that TOTALLY changed the game around?
Ric he seems like a ManU fan to me becuz anybody who watches the EPL knows that ManU is the team that benefits most from refereeing decisions. Generally however, its hard to say how things would have changed if all the decisions were right becuz a minor foul in midfield, or the awarding of a corner and other little things like that could have changed the entire match, so we will never know.
I just hope the powers that be start punishing some of these refs for their obvious ineptness…I don’t expect perfection but some of the decisions we have seen are disgraceful.
I just took a look at the “right result” table and its worse than I thought, it actually has ManU gaining 4 more points…WOW
wat about the last day of the season when paul scholes should have got a red card??? wigan cud hav scored and chelsea wud hav won tha league!! an if chelsea didnt get a penalty against liverpool, liverpool cud hav used the momentum to win the league!! shud think a bit more carefully before writing a shit article
it made Manchester f1rst.
Everyone can crib as much as they want. Point is,, we won… Champions!!!
Well well well the gunners have and are being screwed and I thought that i was a little crazy. Gooners are not annoying we tell it as it is. GET WELL SOON EDU. Arsenal where we kick ass for free. come get some you no good piece of shites.
I was there first.
My web site does the same thing for the Champions League starting with the 2005 - 06 season. The coincidence is a bit too much.
FF
It’s all very good, but it’s hardly factual is it? Football is a sport with a foundation built on clichés… It was a game of two halves, he gave 110% and the referee changed the outcome of the match. Blaming the ref is a get out of gaol free card to managers and fans alike. You simply can’t claim that a bad decision by the ref or linesman created a different outcome. Even if a goal is disallowed in the 89th minute, you can’t say with certainty that the other team couldn’t just run up the pitch and score another goal. It’s like saying “he would have scored if the linesman hadn’t flagged him offside” all because the ball ended in the net, what the event doesn’t take into account is that the goalkeeper didn’t bother trying to save it because he has seen the flag go up or the ref whistles. He may well have saved it if the flag never went up.
And this table is just the same. Just because one goal never stood, or did stand when it shouldn’t, doesn’t meant the match wouldn’t have had the same outcome… OK a goal is not given, who is to say that team simply score 15 minutes later? Just because they didn’t in reality, doesn’t mean they wouldn’t of, if the goal was cancelled out?
The table is an interesting conversational point, but nothing more, mathematics as with football is far more complex than that.
some of u dont kno wot ur goin on about….how the h**l did it help united win the premier league. we had the most prob with referees:
here are some reminders!!!!
> during the blackburn game, we shud have had 3 penalties-ref was demoted to second division game because he messed up
> CHelsea got penalty against us…for ball to hand…not hand to ball…this was not penalty in previosu cfc games against them
> As soon as ronaldo came on we were attacking a corner and john terry was all over ronaldo, ronaldo beat him and terry was holding him back, pushing him!!! This is shocking.shud have been a penalty for us
>FA CUP game against portsmouth was destroyed because players became frustrated with ref - The game was decided by the decision not to give us a penalty
NEED I CONTINUEEE?
Who is to say what decisions are right or wrong I mean going back to the Mascha sending off three quarters of the footballing population thought that was the right decision but yet a certain Wayne Rooney never seems to get booked for blatantly swearing at the officals.
> CHelsea got penalty against us…for ball to hand…not hand to ball…this was not penalty in previosu cfc games against them
Oh, come on… That was *blatantly* handball - just watch the defender’s next three steps and tell me he doesn’t look just like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Otherwise, it would be a 50-50 - because of that reaction, though, it’s unthinkable to suggest the ref could give any other decision.
why don’t u not all agree refs are generally shit… n that manchester utd buys them???? nah jokes (and foul language) apart, u’ve got to admire the time people can lose making such deluded (un)stats when there is a whole world o misery out there…
Although I applaud what Right Result are doing, it’s all a bit irrelevant. They can’t say what would have happened later if a certain decision hadn’t been wrong. They present a good case for increased technological assistance for referees, but you can hardly say “Liverpool shouldn’t have qualified for the Champions League”. You can just say that Lverpool had a significant number of decisions go their way.
Hopefully within the next two years we’ll have hawkeye for goalline decisions and perhaps an appeals system like in tennis for cards, penalties etc, where you only get a certain number and you can only use them if the referee has already stopped play.
Do People actually read how the right result works? It doesn’t claim to be definitive, only to show what may have happened if perfectly good goals had been allowed to stand, and “bad” goals been rightfully dissallowed. It also states that it assumes all penalties are scored (stating that is because 80% or more ARE scored). Whilst the RR table cannot be definitive it DOES show which teams have benifitted more from poor decisions, AND which teams have suffered more. They ignore cards as you cannot correlate booings sendings off to goals.
Whilst you can’t sy that Everton would definately have finished higher than Liverpool had the GOAL related decisions gone for them, you can see that the “Decisions even themselves out” myth doesn’t hold water for them or most other teams in the league.
Any football fan worth his / her salt has had passionate arguments about dodgy decisions for / against their teams, all RR has done is to store those arguments week byt week and create a table.
The Livepool fans, for example, are you saying none of you were complaining, and thinking where’d you be with 2 extra points when Chelsea got that “ghost” penalty against you at the start of the season? Again to use Everton as an example it is unlikely that Blackburn would have equalised had AJ’s goal stood in that game as it was the dying seconds and Everton have the best defence in the Pl in 2008, similarly had Everton gone 2-0 up against West Ham in the 12th minute at Goodison it is far more likely that they would have gone on to win by an even bigger margin, than it was Everton would concede 2 goals, for the 1st time in over 3 months.
Take it for what it is, and look at it logically, unless you really never do discuss dodgy decisions?
“hand of God” anyone?