Guest Post by Stuart Higgins
Hi Liverpool Fans,
I’m writing to ask if there are any qualified football referees here?
The reason I ask is that we are appealing for help with a ref review where a qualified ref reviews Premier League referee performances and scores them overall on key factors. This season just gone, we managed to review 155 (40%) games but we’d like to make that 100% with your help.
Did you know, based on the reviews we carried out, over 75% of Red card decisions as well as 50% of Penalty Decisions and over 45% of Yellow card decisions in Liverpool games were incorrect? Also only 93% of offside decisions were correct which is a far cry from the league average of 99% claimed by the head of the referees, Mike Riley.
Over the course of the season, our refs have watched games for all teams in the Premier League and scored the ref on each incident assessing four main factors. Decisions could be one of the following:-
• Awarded correctly
• Awarded incorrectly
• Correctly not awarded
• Incorrectly not awarded
Another factor also considered was the type of decision and the effect (weight) it had on the game. For example, the ref not awarding a penalty carries far more weight than the ref awarding a throw in to the wrong team in the middle of the park.
The format used to review the refs is an open database, you can see minute by minute assessments and challenge any part of the reviews. Our refs will re-look at the video and amend if appropriate.
Ps, if a decision cannot be confirmed from TV footage as right or wrong, we give the ref the benefit of the doubt so you could say our data is on the conservative side.
More information on how to get involved and links to the individual ref reviews for Liverpool can be found here :
1. The ref appeal : http://www.refereedecisions.co.uk/
2. The reviews : http://blog.emiratesstadium.info/archives/23010
We would really appreciate your help.
