I would suggest that it is impossible to play well in every game, therefore, there are always going to be occasions where other factors come into play.
Of course, if we are playing well, the amount to which the referee can influence proceedings becomes less.,
This is where the scheduling of referees becomes important, through analysis, it would be easy to identify the games where we historically struggle and to appoint to those games referees who we would see as typically biased against us like Mason et al
The referee has a number of tools in his armoury that can impact the teams performance and the flow of a game, one is yellow cards to put players under the threat of a sending off, soft fouls that interrupt the flow of the game but also provides opportunities for goals from set plays and then the more impactful decisions of sendings off, penalties not being given, penalties being awarded, offides being given or not given that very often can directly impact the outcome of the game.
Take these games wherecwe have dropped points or gone out of domestic cups;
Liverpool away Pepe Reina hand ball outside the box, Balo sent off
Chelsea away - non given penalty on silva, man sent off and dubious penalty awarded - result, loss and in that game we actually started like a house on fire
West Brom away - very fussy refereeing and a goal disallowed
Sunderland away - offside goal given
United FA cup - kompany sent off
Liverpool CC Semi - penalty lost one nil
Liverpool away CC semi dodgy handball penalty - ultimately sent us out
Everton away 3 penalties waved away, assault on richards by drenthe unpunished
Swansea away, penalty to swansea awarded, our 'goal' ruled out for very marginal offside
Stoke away assault on Silva unpunished - admittedly didnt directly result in lost points but indicated the mindset of the referee
The obvious thing here is that in the 12 games in league and cup where we have not won there have been major refereeing decisions that have gone against us in 10 of those games. I have not included fulham away but even in that game there was a foul on dzeko in the run up to their goal.
I can only conclude that these matches indicate a propensity of the referee to have awarded decisions against us and the outcome has been dropped points or out of cup competitions. I can only conclude that the 'way' a referee handles a match can clearly have a tremendous impact on the outcome of the match.
Norwich for me was an another example but we played too well for it to have an impact although at 2.1 i bet most blues were concerned that norwich would come back into it in which case the two penalty claims not awarded could have had a massive impact. The fact is this is not an exact science, but throw enough mud at the wall and some of it will stick.
Even with blue tinted specs on the litany of bad decisions against us and consequently poor results tells me that the way in which a game is refereed can have a detrimental impact on the performance and the result. The big difference to me is that when the rags play poorly, quite frequently, they often get the helping hand of the ref, and we quite clearly don't. Something is not right and those who care about the game should continue to expose it and not bury their heads in the sand.
