[Albion] We are top of the league, say we are top of the league!

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

So VAR's attempt to win the league for Southampton isn't going well ?

Hope you are correct but I'm not confident. The only time I can recall the club really showing some balls is when they stood firm on the Caicedo club move issue. There are probably other examples but I can't think of them.

Why go into battle if you think the war is unwinnable (or not worth the winning)?

I'd suggest that we stood very firm over fees for White and Cucu. With Biss and Leo, there wasn't much left on their contracts so getting almost £60 mill for the pair was good business. And when it came to Caicedo, the whole process was a masterstroke, done with class, resulting in the player signing a new contract.

I would contend that Mr Bloom has the instinct and resolve of the master gambler, i.e., balls of steel

 

[Goldstone Guy]

So, as I suspected. Completely random. Someone has to be top/bottom, and there is no 'big club' pattern.

Thanks @Bozza

I think we all now need to pull up our knickers, make Danielle Every a nice cup of tea, and jog on.

See nwgull's post. No I don't think there is a conspiracy but there is probably some sort of unconscious bias going on which favours big clubs.

 

[Guinness Boy]

Those tables just show VAR decisions with no account for whether they’re correct or incorrect. Fairly meaningless really.

Exactly this.

How many times have PGMOL had to apologise this season to Spurs, Man Utd and Liverpool combined?

 

[nwgull]

Exactly this.

How many times have PGMOL had to apologise this season to Spurs, Man Utd and Liverpool combined?

So we’ve had three apologies this season, Spurs and Palace memorably, but when was the other?

Have we had any marginal decisions to our way? I can only remember pens awarded by VAR (not originally given by on-field ref) against Fulham and Brentford, both of which were stonewall.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

See nwgull's post. No I don't think there is a conspiracy but there is probably some sort of unconscious bias going on which favours big clubs.

That's what I believed too.

But it isn't supported by the data. Bozza posted data yesterday that is not consistent with big club bias.

Drawing conclusions from our three apologies is a classic case of assuming an anecdote is representative of a pattern.

I still 'believe' there is unconscious bias, but right now I can't prove it. It would be hard to prove it. I also can't prove it isn't a conspiracy but I have no basis for even wanting to prove this. It is also a fact I can't prove that there are no dinosaurs roaming the outback of Australia.

Believing the explanation they favour to be true is how people convince themselves that alternative medicines work. I remember someone testing a homeopathic veterinarian 'medicine' on a pig, and the pig got better. Then they tried it on another pig, and the pig didn't get better. The homeopath dismissed the latter outcome as it being the wrong sort of pig with a resistant attitude. Rather than....chance.

 

[zefarelly]

VAR is badly managed, and poorly implemented, but it's not big 6 bias clearly

The referees are the problem.

 

[Goldstone Guy]

That's what I believed too.

But it isn't supported by the data. Bozza posted data yesterday that is not consistent with big club bias.

Drawing conclusions from our three apologies is a classic case of assuming an anecdote is representative of a pattern.

I still 'believe' there is unconscious bias, but right now I can't prove it. It would be hard to prove it. I also can't prove it isn't a conspiracy but I have no basis for even wanting to prove this. It is also a fact I can't prove that there are no dinosaurs roaming the outback of Australia.

Believing the explanation they favour to be true is how people convince themselves that alternative medicines work. I remember someone testing a homeopathic veterinarian 'medicine' on a pig, and the pig got better. Then they tried it on another pig, and the pig didn't get better. The homeopath dismissed the latter outcome as it being the wrong sort of pig with a resistant attitude. Rather than....chance.

Fair enough. I didn't see the data/post about the data. When I saw the match highlights from Saturday and hear stuff like Man U not conceding a penalty at Old Trafford for 5 seasons (don't know if this is correct or not) I start thinking that if someone did analyse the data they could show a big club bias. Maybe they have and no bias has been shown to exist.

 

[Baldseagull]

View attachment 159491

How VAR decisions have affected every Premier League club in 2022-23

We're collating a league table of overturned VAR decisions in 2022-23. Who will benefit most over the course of the Premier League season?

www.espn.co.uk

This is not relevant to the quality of the decisions though, VAR may award a penalty or take it away, but we are only really pissed off if the decision is clearly wrong.

 

[Baldseagull]

That's what I believed too.

But it isn't supported by the data. Bozza posted data yesterday that is not consistent with big club bias.

Drawing conclusions from our three apologies is a classic case of assuming an anecdote is representative of a pattern.

I still 'believe' there is unconscious bias, but right now I can't prove it. It would be hard to prove it. I also can't prove it isn't a conspiracy but I have no basis for even wanting to prove this. It is also a fact I can't prove that there are no dinosaurs roaming the outback of Australia.

Believing the explanation they favour to be true is how people convince themselves that alternative medicines work. I remember someone testing a homeopathic veterinarian 'medicine' on a pig, and the pig got better. Then they tried it on another pig, and the pig didn't get better. The homeopath dismissed the latter outcome as it being the wrong sort of pig with a resistant attitude. Rather than....chance.

I still believe that for people that are professional full time football referees, to give the decisions that were given on Saturday, that all benefited one side, there is a concious effort. I can accept the handball goals as subjective decisions that I disagree with, I don't understand how 3 penalty decisions that all seemed to me to be clear and obvious to anyone with the replays in front of them, can not be awarded without there being something very wrong.

 

[Guinness Boy]

That's what I believed too.

But it isn't supported by the data. Bozza posted data yesterday that is not consistent with big club bias.

Drawing conclusions from our three apologies is a classic case of assuming an anecdote is representative of a pattern.

I still 'believe' there is unconscious bias, but right now I can't prove it. It would be hard to prove it. I also can't prove it isn't a conspiracy but I have no basis for even wanting to prove this. It is also a fact I can't prove that there are no dinosaurs roaming the outback of Australia.

Believing the explanation they favour to be true is how people convince themselves that alternative medicines work. I remember someone testing a homeopathic veterinarian 'medicine' on a pig, and the pig got better. Then they tried it on another pig, and the pig didn't get better. The homeopath dismissed the latter outcome as it being the wrong sort of pig with a resistant attitude. Rather than....chance.

I know you’re a data guy, so hopefully you’ll see that the data is flawed, relative to the point you’re making.

Firstly the headline Bozza has pointed out is just the outcome- not whether that outcome was correct. Net subjective is the only indicator of that and it doesn’t include the Spurs game which ups them and downs us.

Secondly the data isn’t split into games where big six teams are playing the other 14 and when they’re playing each other

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

Fair enough. I didn't see the data/post about the data. When I saw the match highlights from Saturday and hear stuff like Man U not conceding a penalty at Old Trafford for 5 seasons (don't know if this is correct or not) I start thinking that if someone did analyse the data they could show a big club bias. Maybe they have and no bias has been shown to exist.

It was 10 years at Man U and the reason for that can never be proven. That was back in the day of clear referee intimidation, however and when the entire football world was apparently in thrall to the shouty red-faced jock.

There is a danger across this whole discussion to take an exceptional piece of information and use it to 'prove' a point.

One of the problems is that 'big club bias' has now become a thing. I have a suspicion that as a thing of conspiracy, it is as real as 'women can't do physics' and 'having one or two makes my driving better'.

Big club bias is definitely a thing, but it is a media thing, not a conspiracy thing. It is a fact that media, even radio 5, will spend more time talking about ManUre's FA cup prospects than ours. They might justify this by saying that ManUre have hundreds fold more supporters than we do, so the media are catering to their audience. They would have a point. That is their media bias. But I don't ever remember anyone in the BBC grizzling when a smaller club beats a bigger club. How much weeping was there about the tragedy of Wigan's cup win over Citeh?

And big club bias does not mean that all officials would prefer ManUre to win when they play us.

And if one really wishes to pervert language (and I can easily hear someone posing this as a thing on 6-0-6), the EPL has been won almost exclusively by big clubs in the last 20 years, so this proves there is big club bias. I can see one or two NSC posters nodding in agreement with that

My position in most situations is 'let's set aside the notion of a conspiracy and see if we can find any signal among the noise'. I'm still looking....

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

I still believe that for people that are professional full time football referees, to give the decisions that were given on Saturday, that all benefited one side, there is a concious effort. I can accept the handball goals as subjective decisions that I disagree with, I don't understand how 3 penalty decisions that all seemed to me to be clear and obvious to anyone with the replays in front of them, can not be awarded without there being something very wrong.

Fair enough. It could have been conscious bias, sure. We will never be able to prove that though. So what to do? Some say simply ban VAR. But that will do nothing to resolve conscious bias.....

The problem with the issue now is the conversation has become a mess with people raising all sorts of reasonable but possibly irrelevant or intractable issues. Unfortunately this is triggering some to conclude that the best solution is to bin VAR.....among all the solutions this is the only one that is guaranteed to not be on the table.

 

[Billy the Fish]

And that doesn't include the 3 penalty decisions we didn't get yesterday, or Mitoma's goal being ruled out. The reality is far far worse than your table suggests.

Agree.
Some of those VAR decisions in @Bozza 's table were probably correct.

It's the apologies for mistakes and the obvious decisions they ignored which are important.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

I know you’re a data guy, so hopefully you’ll see that the data is flawed, relative to the point you’re making.

Firstly the headline Bozza has pointed out is just the outcome- not whether that outcome was correct. Net subjective is the only indicator of that and it doesn’t include the Spurs game which ups them and downs us.

Secondly the data isn’t split into games where big six teams are playing the other 14 and when they’re playing each other

I agree. The data are flawed.

But it remains there are no data to support the notion there is a big club bias when decisions are made.

Moving this on....Is it possible for someone to dig into this properly? One of the confounds is that good and bad decisions would need to be compared with a yardstick - in other words compared with the decision that would be unequivocally accepted as the correct decision. I am certain that all 4 key decisions made yesterday were wrong, but can I prove that? Is any foul in the box a pen even if it doesn't impair a goal scoring opportunity (Mitoma foul)? I am convinced about the T shirt line for handballs, but I haven't checked if this is real or a myth.....with other decisions in other matches, as we have seen time after time, it can often go either way. So without a properly curated data set of unequivocally correctly labelled decisions with which to compare the match day decision given, this experiment would be flawed.

Are you still team 'bin VAR' or do you accept it won't be binned? If the latter, how should it be fixed? I'm guessing that you might say 'VAR may be used only if the on field ref asks for a review over a possible penalty decision - and offsides and other issues should be judged by the on field ref'. I'd reluctantly agree to a trial of that. Maybe.

 

[Baldseagull]

Fair enough. It could have been conscious bias, sure. We will never be able to prove that though. So what to do? Some say simply ban VAR. But that will do nothing to resolve conscious bias.....

The problem with the issue now is the conversation has become a mess with people raising all sorts of reasonable but possibly irrelevant or intractable issues. Unfortunately this is triggering some to conclude that the best solution is to bin VAR.....among all the solutions this is the only one that is guaranteed to not be on the table.

Maybe it could never be proven, or maybe there is evidence of Officials being encouraged to favour one side in certain games, there was evidence in Spain and Italy.

 

[Couldn't Be Hyypia]

Pervis v Palace
Fabinho foul on Ferguson
Foul on Mitoma

 

[Deadly Danson]

What concerned me on Saturday was that within a minute or so Attwell spoke to Caicedo I think for a pretty innocuous challenge. A minute or two later he failed to speak to a Spurs player for a virtually identical challenge. For whatever reason - home bias, big team bias, corruption, intimidation, a dislike of Brighton or whatever - Attwell definitely approached the match favouring Spurs, of that I have zero doubt even if it may have been unconscious. I also think this then spreads to his VAR during their comms - I expect for Mitoma's first the conversation would have gone "we all think Mitoma clearly handballed it - do you have 100% proof he didn't?" which then puts the onus on VAR to stick with the onfield decision. For the Spurs handball: "looked accidental onfield - any reason to disagree with me?, for MacAllister's "handball" - "all the Spurs players are convinced it was handball - can you confirm this please?", for Mitoma's penalty, "Not enough contact, definitely looking to go down - anything obvious?" and for Dunk's "he's looking to go down, nothing out of the ordinary".

This bias then puts pressure on the junior ref at VAR who doesn't want to go against his colleague who has already consciously or unconsciously decided who he wants to win the game.

Attwell has always been a terrible ref and I think it was his attitude to the game that caused the atmosphere whereby VAR got himself in a mess.

I'm pretty confident if Oliver or Tierney were in the VAR booth the game would have panned out very very differently.

 

[Guinness Boy]

I agree. The data are flawed.

But it remains there are no data to support the notion there is a big club bias when decisions are made.

Moving this on....Is it possible for someone to dig into this properly? One of the confounds is that good and bad decisions would need to be compared with a yardstick - in other words compared with the decision that would be unequivocally accepted as the correct decision. I am certain that all 4 key decisions made yesterday were wrong, but can I prove that? Is any foul in the box a pen even if it doesn't impair a goal scoring opportunity (Mitoma foul)? I am convinced about the T shirt line for handballs, but I haven't checked if this is real or a myth.....with other decisions in other matches, as we have seen time after time, it can often go either way. So without a properly curated data set of unequivocally correctly labelled decisions with which to compare the match day decision given, this experiment would be flawed.

Are you still team 'bin VAR' or do you accept it won't be binned? If the latter, how should it be fixed? I'm guessing that you might say 'VAR may be used only if the on field ref asks for a review over a possible penalty decision - and offsides and other issues should be judged by the on field ref'. I'd reluctantly agree to a trial of that. Maybe.

I don't think there's a bunch of guys sat round in the proverbial smoke filled room making sure that Brighton don't get any decisions on the field. That would be ridiculous. But there's all kinds of conscious and unconscious bias, some of which there is evidence for and some of which is just a feeling or outcome.

I posted a Guardian long read article about Premier League refereeing a week or two ago where they followed Darren England and Andre Mariner. Both admitted to preparing by analysing previous decisions featuring the clubs they were about to referee. Should Atwell have looked at us and thought that there's a chance that Mitoma goes down too easily and that De Zerbi does stuff that warrants a red card then he already has that in his head and he has played the past and not the decision in front of him in both cases. He might admire Kane as an England captain. He might be annoyed about the treatment of Kane for what was a letter of the law red card at Everton. He might feel personally that Spurs are a better fit in the Champions League than little ole Brighton. If he does, he carries that bias into the game. You can't prove that with data. But the alternative is that he was incompetent. In which case, WHY are the Premier League appointing an incompetent ref to a game that will probably decide a Champions League place?

As for VAR I've never wanted it. It's ruined the game I love utterly. Get rid. I don't CARE that it won't happen. It SHOULD.

 

[Kinky Gerbil]

So, as I suspected. Completely random. Someone has to be top/bottom, and there is no 'big club' pattern.

Thanks @Bozza

I think we all now need to pull up our knickers, make Danielle Every a nice cup of tea, and jog on.

The one thing I would add is that second list seems to be missing some, but yes there is no pattern.

The only club in top 6 with a plus score is Liverpool.

 

[Cheshire Cat]

View attachment 159491

How VAR decisions have affected every Premier League club in 2022-23

We're collating a league table of overturned VAR decisions in 2022-23. Who will benefit most over the course of the Premier League season?

www.espn.co.uk

You're just winding them up now.