so this agenda thing.

[sir baconface]

Things like the Aguerooo moment and 100+ league goals make shit box office.

 

[George Hannah]

Things like the Aguerooo moment and 100+ league goals make shit box office.

that moment was simultaneously broadcast with a concluded game in the north east and the dippers were the free-scoring centurions of last season

 

[tonea2003]

Things like the Aguerooo moment and 100+ league goals make shit box office.

that moment was simultaneously broadcast with a concluded game in the north east and the dippers were the free-scoring centurions of last season

keep em' coming ickey

 

[Blue Mooner]

Perhaps you could help we sandy heads understand how this 'dodgy' charade was conceptualised? I mean did referees have it as a formal agenda (if you'll forgive the pun) item at their AGM this year - point 1. How do we go about nobbling those Blue bastards? - or is it more of an evolving concept like the Endlosung, or is it more of a Cold War thing with sleeper cells of City hating officials put in place in 2008 and now becoming active? All joking apart though, what are you suggesting? An unexplained inherent loathing of City? Brown envelopes stuffed with cash passed under tables in the back rooms of pubs? What?

it's just a case of them seeking to please their employers when they can get away with it - their employers' desires being totally obvious and mirroring those of their own employers.

How would their employers know that they were being pleased, as opposed to them just being crap refs?

This does get rather tedious as it's been mentioned many, many times. There are no smokey room meetings and there doesn't need to be.

The high level goals of any organisation, metrics, targets, KPi's that are set by the top, this feeds down to lower levels of management and gets cascaded down. It's usually implemented through cause and effect and people in this case learn how to get on in any organisation A bad decision against the rags usually gets disproportionately punished by the referees assessor, a decision against the traditional top four edicts more criticism from the mainstream media etc etc. referees will know this and as a result will err on the side of the decision that will have the least negative impact on their career. The challenge for them is that some decisions are so blatant one way or another that they have to be given and therefore elicit no criticism. I think the situation got worse when we got full time employees refereeing as it is now careers that are on the line

The bias that I think is evident in the way our matches get refereed, and very clearly backed up by the stats, is that we get negatively treated by referees. That doesn't mean that we never get a decision but that when a difficult decision or slightly contentious decision needs to be made in a critical part of a match in a critical game, usually, the decision is not in our favour.

I have definitely seen the rags get far less favourable refereeing decisions since Fergie retired and I now believe that his influence on referees was huge.

There are also those occasions and specific referees where the referee goes out of his way to impact the match in a way that will handicap our efforts. The most disgraceful of these IMO was the Kompany sending off against the rags, the Micah Richards handball in the semi against liverpool, the 7 minutes of injury time against the rags in the 4-3, the non penalty when Skrtel punched the ball last season and I could go on. Major decisions in major games. People go on about the scouters disallowed goal against us, but the linesman gave the decision and all our players stopped including hart. No one knows what would have happened had the decision not been given. In other words, it was a run of the mill offside decision given in every single game.

Clearly the stats only tell half the story, it's not necessarily the number of bookings, or fouls given, penalties awarded that is necessarily critical but the timing and impact that those decisions can have on a match. I would think if this was looked into in more detail the stats would be even more telling.

I think we have been getting less bad decisions last season, but this appears to have reared its head again with a vengeance. I for one will be watching them closely.

 

[Exeter Blue I am here]

it's just a case of them seeking to please their employers when they can get away with it - their employers' desires being totally obvious and mirroring those of their own employers.

How would their employers know that they were being pleased, as opposed to them just being crap refs?

This does get rather tedious as it's been mentioned many, many times. There are no smokey room meetings and there doesn't need to be.

The high level goals of any organisation, metrics, targets, KPi's that are set by the top, this feeds down to lower levels of management and gets cascaded down. It's usually implemented through cause and effect and people in this case learn how to get on in any organisation A bad decision against the rags usually gets disproportionately punished by the referees assessor, a decision against the traditional top four edicts more criticism from the mainstream media etc etc. referees will know this and as a result will err on the side of the decision that will have the least negative impact on their career. The challenge for them is that some decisions are so blatant one way or another that they have to be given and therefore elicit no criticism. I think the situation got worse when we got full time employees refereeing as it is now careers that are on the line

The bias that I think is evident in the way our matches get refereed, and very clearly backed up by the stats, is that we get negatively treated by referees. That doesn't mean that we never get a decision but that when a difficult decision or slightly contentious decision needs to be made in a critical part of a match in a critical game, usually, the decision is not in our favour.

I have definitely seen the rags get far less favourable refereeing decisions since Fergie retired and I now believe that his influence on referees was huge.

There are also those occasions and specific referees where the referee goes out of his way to impact the match in a way that will handicap our efforts. The most disgraceful of these IMO was the Kompany sending off against the rags, the Micah Richards handball in the semi against liverpool, the 7 minutes of injury time against the rags in the 4-3, the non penalty when Skrtel punched the ball last season and I could go on. Major decisions in major games. People go on about the scouters disallowed goal against us, but the linesman gave the decision and all our players stopped including hart. No one knows what would have happened had the decision not been given. In other words, it was a run of the mill offside decision given in every single game.

Clearly the stats only tell half the story, it's not necessarily the number of bookings, or fouls given, penalties awarded that is necessarily critical but the timing and impact that those decisions can have on a match. I would think if this was looked into in more detail the stats would be even more telling.

I think we have been getting less bad decisions last season, but this appears to have reared its head again with a vengeance. I for one will be watching them closely.

For someone who sets so much store in stats and (purported) facts, you don't half do a fine line in supposition. Unless you work for the Referee's Association (something I seriously doubt based on the tone of your imaginative posts on this thread) then the highlighted bit is just waffling guesswork, a mish-mash of meaningless buzzwords. I'm surprised you didn't slot 'overarching deliverables' in there for good measure. How do you know what the RA's stated goals are, how do you know what gets fed down to the elite officials themselves, how do you know that a bad decision against the rags gets disproportionately marked down by the assessors? Has Clattenburg been demoted to the Championship this weekend? Not as far as I can see. And are you really suggesting that all referees have to learn how to get on in an organisation, toe the party line or get out (ie by implication they're all bent to some degree)?
I'll happily take the point on Taggart, but the effect of his bullying, whereby some individual referees might have buckled (Alan Wilkie springs to mind) under pressure, has got fuck all to do with agendas or bias and everything to do with mental frailty of the individual ref concerned.

 

[Chris in London]

How would their employers know that they were being pleased, as opposed to them just being crap refs?

This does get rather tedious as it's been mentioned many, many times. There are no smokey room meetings and there doesn't need to be.

The high level goals of any organisation, metrics, targets, KPi's that are set by the top, this feeds down to lower levels of management and gets cascaded down. It's usually implemented through cause and effect and people in this case learn how to get on in any organisation A bad decision against the rags usually gets disproportionately punished by the referees assessor, a decision against the traditional top four edicts more criticism from the mainstream media etc etc. referees will know this and as a result will err on the side of the decision that will have the least negative impact on their career. The challenge for them is that some decisions are so blatant one way or another that they have to be given and therefore elicit no criticism. I think the situation got worse when we got full time employees refereeing as it is now careers that are on the line

The bias that I think is evident in the way our matches get refereed, and very clearly backed up by the stats, is that we get negatively treated by referees. That doesn't mean that we never get a decision but that when a difficult decision or slightly contentious decision needs to be made in a critical part of a match in a critical game, usually, the decision is not in our favour.

I have definitely seen the rags get far less favourable refereeing decisions since Fergie retired and I now believe that his influence on referees was huge.

There are also those occasions and specific referees where the referee goes out of his way to impact the match in a way that will handicap our efforts. The most disgraceful of these IMO was the Kompany sending off against the rags, the Micah Richards handball in the semi against liverpool, the 7 minutes of injury time against the rags in the 4-3, the non penalty when Skrtel punched the ball last season and I could go on. Major decisions in major games. People go on about the scouters disallowed goal against us, but the linesman gave the decision and all our players stopped including hart. No one knows what would have happened had the decision not been given. In other words, it was a run of the mill offside decision given in every single game.

Clearly the stats only tell half the story, it's not necessarily the number of bookings, or fouls given, penalties awarded that is necessarily critical but the timing and impact that those decisions can have on a match. I would think if this was looked into in more detail the stats would be even more telling.

I think we have been getting less bad decisions last season, but this appears to have reared its head again with a vengeance. I for one will be watching them closely.

For someone who sets so much store in stats and (purported) facts, you don't half do a fine line in supposition. Unless you work for the Referee's Association (something I seriously doubt based on the tone of your imaginative posts on this thread) then the highlighted bit is just waffling guesswork, a mish-mash of meaningless buzzwords. I'm surprised you didn't slot 'overarching deliverables' in there for good measure. How do you know what the RA's stated goals are, how do you know what gets fed down to the elite officials themselves, how do you know that a bad decision against the rags gets disproportionately marked down by the assessors? Has Clattenburg been demoted to the Championship this weekend? Not as far as I can see. And are you really suggesting that all referees have to learn how to get on in an organisation, toe the party line or get out (ie by implication they're all bent to some degree)?
I'll happily take the point on Taggart, but the effect of his bullying, whereby some individual referees might have buckled (Alan Wilkie springs to mind) under pressure, has got fuck all to do with agendas or bias and everything to do with mental frailty of the individual ref concerned.

I posted this in another thread but it resonates here, too.

Since the beginning of the 2013/14 season, Clattenberg is the only referee to award a penalty against United, and he has awarded 6 in 4 games. In the 41 other league games refereed by everyone else, not a single penalty has been awarded.

Out of interest, do you have any theory as to why Clattenberg awards so many penalties and other referees none at all? It cannot relate to Taggart because he has been gone since the end of the 12/13 season.

 

[George Hannah]

This does get rather tedious as it's been mentioned many, many times. There are no smokey room meetings and there doesn't need to be.

The high level goals of any organisation, metrics, targets, KPi's that are set by the top, this feeds down to lower levels of management and gets cascaded down. It's usually implemented through cause and effect and people in this case learn how to get on in any organisation A bad decision against the rags usually gets disproportionately punished by the referees assessor, a decision against the traditional top four edicts more criticism from the mainstream media etc etc. referees will know this and as a result will err on the side of the decision that will have the least negative impact on their career. The challenge for them is that some decisions are so blatant one way or another that they have to be given and therefore elicit no criticism. I think the situation got worse when we got full time employees refereeing as it is now careers that are on the line

The bias that I think is evident in the way our matches get refereed, and very clearly backed up by the stats, is that we get negatively treated by referees. That doesn't mean that we never get a decision but that when a difficult decision or slightly contentious decision needs to be made in a critical part of a match in a critical game, usually, the decision is not in our favour.

I have definitely seen the rags get far less favourable refereeing decisions since Fergie retired and I now believe that his influence on referees was huge.

There are also those occasions and specific referees where the referee goes out of his way to impact the match in a way that will handicap our efforts. The most disgraceful of these IMO was the Kompany sending off against the rags, the Micah Richards handball in the semi against liverpool, the 7 minutes of injury time against the rags in the 4-3, the non penalty when Skrtel punched the ball last season and I could go on. Major decisions in major games. People go on about the scouters disallowed goal against us, but the linesman gave the decision and all our players stopped including hart. No one knows what would have happened had the decision not been given. In other words, it was a run of the mill offside decision given in every single game.

Clearly the stats only tell half the story, it's not necessarily the number of bookings, or fouls given, penalties awarded that is necessarily critical but the timing and impact that those decisions can have on a match. I would think if this was looked into in more detail the stats would be even more telling.

I think we have been getting less bad decisions last season, but this appears to have reared its head again with a vengeance. I for one will be watching them closely.

For someone who sets so much store in stats and (purported) facts, you don't half do a fine line in supposition. Unless you work for the Referee's Association (something I seriously doubt based on the tone of your imaginative posts on this thread) then the highlighted bit is just waffling guesswork, a mish-mash of meaningless buzzwords. I'm surprised you didn't slot 'overarching deliverables' in there for good measure. How do you know what the RA's stated goals are, how do you know what gets fed down to the elite officials themselves, how do you know that a bad decision against the rags gets disproportionately marked down by the assessors? Has Clattenburg been demoted to the Championship this weekend? Not as far as I can see. And are you really suggesting that all referees have to learn how to get on in an organisation, toe the party line or get out (ie by implication they're all bent to some degree)?
I'll happily take the point on Taggart, but the effect of his bullying, whereby some individual referees might have buckled (Alan Wilkie springs to mind) under pressure, has got fuck all to do with agendas or bias and everything to do with mental frailty of the individual ref concerned.

I posted this in another thread but it resonates here, too.

Since the beginning of the 2013/14 season, Clattenberg is the only referee to award a penalty against United, and he has awarded 6 in 4 games. In the 41 other league games refereed by everyone else, not a single penalty has been awarded.

Out of interest, do you have any theory as to why Clattenberg awards so many penalties and other referees none at all? It cannot relate to Taggart because he has been gone since the end of the 12/13 season.

His main employer is a Chinese bookmaker?

 

[Exeter Blue I am here]

This does get rather tedious as it's been mentioned many, many times. There are no smokey room meetings and there doesn't need to be.

The high level goals of any organisation, metrics, targets, KPi's that are set by the top, this feeds down to lower levels of management and gets cascaded down. It's usually implemented through cause and effect and people in this case learn how to get on in any organisation A bad decision against the rags usually gets disproportionately punished by the referees assessor, a decision against the traditional top four edicts more criticism from the mainstream media etc etc. referees will know this and as a result will err on the side of the decision that will have the least negative impact on their career. The challenge for them is that some decisions are so blatant one way or another that they have to be given and therefore elicit no criticism. I think the situation got worse when we got full time employees refereeing as it is now careers that are on the line

The bias that I think is evident in the way our matches get refereed, and very clearly backed up by the stats, is that we get negatively treated by referees. That doesn't mean that we never get a decision but that when a difficult decision or slightly contentious decision needs to be made in a critical part of a match in a critical game, usually, the decision is not in our favour.

I have definitely seen the rags get far less favourable refereeing decisions since Fergie retired and I now believe that his influence on referees was huge.

There are also those occasions and specific referees where the referee goes out of his way to impact the match in a way that will handicap our efforts. The most disgraceful of these IMO was the Kompany sending off against the rags, the Micah Richards handball in the semi against liverpool, the 7 minutes of injury time against the rags in the 4-3, the non penalty when Skrtel punched the ball last season and I could go on. Major decisions in major games. People go on about the scouters disallowed goal against us, but the linesman gave the decision and all our players stopped including hart. No one knows what would have happened had the decision not been given. In other words, it was a run of the mill offside decision given in every single game.

Clearly the stats only tell half the story, it's not necessarily the number of bookings, or fouls given, penalties awarded that is necessarily critical but the timing and impact that those decisions can have on a match. I would think if this was looked into in more detail the stats would be even more telling.

I think we have been getting less bad decisions last season, but this appears to have reared its head again with a vengeance. I for one will be watching them closely.

For someone who sets so much store in stats and (purported) facts, you don't half do a fine line in supposition. Unless you work for the Referee's Association (something I seriously doubt based on the tone of your imaginative posts on this thread) then the highlighted bit is just waffling guesswork, a mish-mash of meaningless buzzwords. I'm surprised you didn't slot 'overarching deliverables' in there for good measure. How do you know what the RA's stated goals are, how do you know what gets fed down to the elite officials themselves, how do you know that a bad decision against the rags gets disproportionately marked down by the assessors? Has Clattenburg been demoted to the Championship this weekend? Not as far as I can see. And are you really suggesting that all referees have to learn how to get on in an organisation, toe the party line or get out (ie by implication they're all bent to some degree)?
I'll happily take the point on Taggart, but the effect of his bullying, whereby some individual referees might have buckled (Alan Wilkie springs to mind) under pressure, has got fuck all to do with agendas or bias and everything to do with mental frailty of the individual ref concerned.

I posted this in another thread but it resonates here, too.

Since the beginning of the 2013/14 season, Clattenberg is the only referee to award a penalty against United, and he has awarded 6 in 4 games. In the 41 other league games refereed by everyone else, not a single penalty has been awarded.

Out of interest, do you have any theory as to why Clattenberg awards so many penalties and other referees none at all? It cannot relate to Taggart because he has been gone since the end of the 12/13 season.

I'm not sure where you get your stats from but Clattenburg has awarded 18 penalties in the last 3 seasons, which puts him pretty much slap bang in the middle of the 17 referees appointed to the Premier League. As regards the United thing and the 37 games (it's been a few years since we played 42 games a season!) without a penalty being given against them, the same is pretty much true of City, as in 37 of our 38 games no-one gave the opposition a penalty either. We did get awarded 7 of our own, which might confuse the refereeing agenda fraternity on here somewhat! Not being sarcastic Chris, but what point are you trying to make?

 

[sir baconface]

Things like the Aguerooo moment and 100+ league goals make shit box office.

that moment was simultaneously broadcast with a concluded game in the north east and the dippers were the free-scoring centurions of last season

Yes, yes, George. Of course.

 

[Chris in London]

For someone who sets so much store in stats and (purported) facts, you don't half do a fine line in supposition. Unless you work for the Referee's Association (something I seriously doubt based on the tone of your imaginative posts on this thread) then the highlighted bit is just waffling guesswork, a mish-mash of meaningless buzzwords. I'm surprised you didn't slot 'overarching deliverables' in there for good measure. How do you know what the RA's stated goals are, how do you know what gets fed down to the elite officials themselves, how do you know that a bad decision against the rags gets disproportionately marked down by the assessors? Has Clattenburg been demoted to the Championship this weekend? Not as far as I can see. And are you really suggesting that all referees have to learn how to get on in an organisation, toe the party line or get out (ie by implication they're all bent to some degree)?
I'll happily take the point on Taggart, but the effect of his bullying, whereby some individual referees might have buckled (Alan Wilkie springs to mind) under pressure, has got fuck all to do with agendas or bias and everything to do with mental frailty of the individual ref concerned.

I posted this in another thread but it resonates here, too.

Since the beginning of the 2013/14 season, Clattenberg is the only referee to award a penalty against United, and he has awarded 6 in 4 games. In the 41 other league games refereed by everyone else, not a single penalty has been awarded.

Out of interest, do you have any theory as to why Clattenberg awards so many penalties and other referees none at all? It cannot relate to Taggart because he has been gone since the end of the 12/13 season.

I'm not sure where you get your stats from but Clattenburg has awarded 18 penalties in the last 3 seasons, which puts him pretty much slap bang in the middle of the 17 referees appointed to the Premier League. As regards the United thing and the 37 games (it's been a few years since we played 42 games a season!) without a penalty being given against them, the same is pretty much true of City, as in 37 of our 38 games no-one gave the opposition a penalty either. We did get awarded 7 of our own, which might confuse the refereeing agenda fraternity on here somewhat! Not being sarcastic Chris, but what point are you trying to make?

I'm not trying to make a point at all, but it is anomalous and the anomaly warrants discussion.

The stats are my own research, my source is the BBC website. There were 38 matches last season and there have been five so far this season so there have been 43 league games since the beginning of the 13/14 season (I had a senior moment and made it 45). That means there have been 39 games since the beginning of the 13/14 season that Clattenberg did not referee. (again, I managed to make it 41).

The discrepancy between the penalties award by Clattenberg against United and the penalties awarded by every other referee against United is vast and anomalous. The bare statistics indicate that in 3510 minutes of football played in games not refereed by Clattenberg not a single foul was committed by United in their own area, whereas in 360 minutes of football refereed by Clattenberg, six fouls were.

Your statistics about Clattenberg's General trend in terms of awarding penalties makes the anomaly even more stark. In 3 seasons he has awarded 18 penalties, 6 of them against United in the last four games. 12 penalties in three years against everyone else and six in four games against United? Wow. Did Giggs fuck his wife too?

So far as all the other referees are concerned, if Taggart was still in charge at the swamp I could understand the reluctance to award penalties against the rags for the reasons that have been discussed at length in this thread and others already. The same pattern however has been replicated since he retired, save for Clattenberg's games, so the Ferguson fear factor cannot be the explanation. Perhaps they genuinely didn't commit any fouls in the area in those 39 games that Clattenberg did not referee. There are however a number of examples of referees other than Clattenberg give United the benefit of the doubt (Mason for instance) and Clattenberg alone giving it the other way - the soft penalty on Sunday being an example. Both of those things seem to me to call for further consideration.

The comparison with us and penalties against seems to me to be a tenuous one. We accumulated 22 points more than United last season, and our win ratios and possession statistics were vastly superior. A better comparison for penalties conceded would be Spurs or Southampton whose season records were not vastly dissimilar. I would have thought a better point of comparison for us would have been Liverpool or Chelsea.

It is perhaps the discrepancy between Clattenberg's track record relating to the rags and every other referee's record that makes the statistics so remarkable. In terms of "the agenda", whatever that is, the anomaly suggests strongly that something more than mere chance is involved - unless of course in those 39 games there really were no fouls in the area, and in Clattenberg's four game there really were six. Whatever the agenda is, the anomaly would suggest that there is in fact more than one agenda at work and they do not necessarily have the same objective.

But anyway, I asked if you had any theory as to why 6 penalties were awarded against United in 360 minutes of football by Clattenberg, and none in 3,510 minutes by everybody else, and the answer seems to be that you don't. I wasn't picking a fight, I simply wondered if you could readily explain it.