Agenda against City? Ref Stats 2012/13

[JoeMercer'sWay]

That is some great stats work, very impressed. I think the thing missing from it is a comparison of referees against all other top five clubs. Every referee had a higher freekicks given to conceded ratio for the rags than for us. If that holds true for Chelsea, Arsenal and Spurs, you've removed any noise in your data relating to the rags being the best attacking side and either we are victims of bias or something in our style of play is causing us to be given fewer free-kicks that we ought to be getting.

Got the stats for freekicks for the top 6 before the weekend's games(all %):

Freekicks for/conceded:

Atkinson(MU): 55.2, chelsea 53.8, everton 53.1, arse 52.3, spurs 51.2, mc 42.9.

Clattenburg(arse): 61.2, mu 59.3, spurs 52.2, chelsea 51.6, mc 50, everton N/A.

Dean(arse): 59.6, chelsea 52.7, spurs 52.2, mu 51.3, mc 46, everton N/A

Dowd(spurs): 64.4, chelsea 59.1, arse 58, mc 47.6, everton 40.7, mu N/A

Foy(spurs): 57.1, chelsea 56.7, arse 54.3, mu 40.8, mc 32.7, everton N/A

Friend(arse): 61.8, spurs 57.7, chelsea 55.9, mc 48.5, everton 45.8, mu 43.4.

Halsey(everton): 53.5, spurs 52.2, mu 46.6, mc 44.9, chelsea 33.3, arse N/A

Jones(everton): 60.7, chels 55.2, mu + spurs 52.2, arse 48.3, mc 47.4.

Marriner(chelsea): 62.6, arse 59.2, everton 55.8, mu 55.1, spurs 43.1, mc 33.8.

Mason(everton): 59.3, spurs 56.1, chelsea 51, arse 50, mu 48, mc N/A.

Moss(arse): 58.7, chelsea 57.5, everton 47.1, mu 40.5, mc 35.8, spurs N/A.

Oliver(spurs): 72.2, arse 70, chelsea 53.3, mu 49.1, everton 46.3, mc 34.8.

Probert(spurs): 60.9, mu 57.9, arse 55.8, mc 50, everton 49.3, chelsea N/A.

Swarbrick(mu): 66.7, chelsea 58.6, spurs 56.6, arse 53.8, everton 53.7, mc 47.8.

Taylor(everton): 59.5, mu 54.8, arse 51.3, spurs 47.4, chelsea 42.5, mc 40.7.

Webb(chelsea): 60.9, arse 51.8, mu 51.6, spurs 51.5, mc 47.5, everton 45.7.

 

[simonmdm]

To be fair, the results don't show how many times a foul has been committed against us but we've played on.

Also, as others have said, we can be quite a cynical team by committing fouls where the opponent could start a counter attack (Barry, Garcia and Kompany do this a lot). Also, when your team is under a lot of pressure, opposition players are happy to go down under minimum contact and get there team a bit of breathing space.

 

[Blueside]

Great article - thanks for the data and analysis. There were some games last year (notably Chelsea and Liverpool) where let's say we didn't get the rub of the green....

I think there is an inbuilt bias towards the 'big' teams, how it is inculculated I don't know, but we only have to look at the so-called Financial Fair Play rules to see how far it can be taken when necessary. Wouldn't surprise me that the reluctance for video replays is precisely because it would probably be fairer towards the lower teams....

Funny that the only game where United were on the receiving end from the ref this season was in the Chumps league ...however that was against a team higher up than them in the pecking order, so now they know what it is like.