Coote's Years At Manchester FA, & Manchester VARs’ Data Looks INCREDIBLY Biased

*David Coote’s Manchester Friends (?) and Colleagues In Action Versus Liverpool*

Sigh.

Look what you made me do.

(© Swift, Taylor.)

I’ll (hopefully) be enjoying the Real Madrid game on TV tonight, but yesterday, news of the PGMOL’s most Mancunian gang being sent to Anfield to ref a Mancunian opponent in an absolutely pivotal game was a surprise even by their standards …

… then I wake up to find alleged betting scandals with David Coote, who worked for the Manchester FA for four years and trained its refs, is now being investigated for betting breaches where he gave a yellow card to allow a mate to make a bet on it?

(After silence on all the other claims, with no denials, he strenuously denies this latest one, but talks about how whatever ‘personal problems’ he had didn’t affect his officiating … which suggests that by not denying the cocaine allegations, and the Klopp tirade, they were true. As I said before, anyone having an expensive cocaine habit, or just using it in general, especially on official duty, could lead to blackmail and other sources of attack. Certainly it seems that someone has a lot of dirt on Coote that they’re feeding out; or maybe lots of different people have a lot of different dirt.)

The officiating of Mancunians (those from Greater Manchester, or who worked for the Manchester FA) whenever Liverpool, Man City and Man United are involved is so provably biased, with clear patterns in the data, that this all seems connected.

Liverpudlian officials seem to show a similar bias as I’ve said in the past, but they don’t do Liverpool games, so it’s hard to make the full comparison. As you’d never get Liverpool-based officials doing a game against any club, let alone a Mancunian title rival, it’s almost moot, other than to show the general trend.

The Manchester-connected refs’ data is highly statistically significant in its irregularity, according to the senior university lecturer and author I ran the data past:

• The chances of getting a result like this by chance are less than 1 in 20 – the conventional definition of statistically significant.

More on that later.

After my last, and which was intended to be final roundup of officiating, the Manchester data needed some loose ends tying up. Then – David Coote’s Mancunian links popped up, albeit I’ve yet to see them widely discussed.

Manchester-connected official’s decision-making tendencies can be explained by the location of the game and the location of the official (i.e. especially if a long way away at Stockley Park).

First, we need to talk about Coote’s friends, and his super-strong Manchester connection, and then his apparent willingness to please, which can be seen in how he lets people video him saying offensive and unprofessional things.

(According to one report discussing the initial tabloid accusations, “Coote is said to be trying to impress a Leeds fan he had met online” … as if that’s okay! He wasn’t looking to profit financially, just impress people?!)

Coote’s Job With Manchester FA

Coote’s mates may of course include the officials picked to do Manchester’s visit to Anfield this weekend.

Once I became aware of David Coote’s very strong Manchester connections after what was going to be my last piece on officiating, it made more sense in terms of his data and his decisions.

Indeed, how it wasn’t widely known seemed bizarre.

Irrespective of whether his Manchester FA job made him more anti-Liverpool, it’s important to establish that he actually worked there, as it’s not on his Wikipedia page.

After all, he worked for their FA for four years, training refs, according the Manchester FA’s own website on various pages, and Coote’s very own LinkedIn, including working with Chris Kavanagh.)

Coote’s LinkedIn profile goes on to state:

“Manchester County Football Association, 3 yrs 7 mos”

(Google it, however, and weirdly, you won’t get those results, maybe as it’s not public access without a LinkedIn account.)

And where was that job based?

At Man City’s youth complex, at the exact time when City were allegedly* making all kinds of payments to people that they should not.

(* Etc.)

So, there’s this, from 2013:

“Following a full review by Referee Development Manager David Coote, Academy Director Chris Kavanagh and the Referee Development Team, the Manchester FA Referees Academy is to be restructured and you can apply to join now!

“Take a look at our brief of the the new-look Academy below and if you would like to apply, please complete the form attached and return it to david.coote@manchesterfa.com by 5pm on 15 May 2013. Please note that all current Academy referees will have to re-apply for Academy selection.”

Next, the time in 2013 when Coote thought some Germans were okay.

“As England's U21 side lined up to face Sweden at Walsall’s Banks’s Stadium last night, there was a familiar face representing Manchester FA.

“MCFA’s newly-appointed Referee Development Manager, David Coote (pictured far left), teamed up with a trio of German officials to act as Fourth Official as Stuart Pearce’s side recorded an unprecedented seventh straight victory.”

Manchester County Football Association has long been housed at the Man City complex.

In 2014 they moved in with City at the then Manchester City youth academy.

“Manchester County FA today announce the relocation of their headquarters from Manchester Communications Academy in Harpurhey to Manchester City’s Platt Lane complex in Fallowfield.

“From December 2014 the full Manchester County FA team will be based at the Platt Lane site, moving in phases over the coming months. This has been made possible by a new collaboration with Manchester City Council and Manchester City Football Club in the pursuit of improving local grass roots football development and follows a temporary stay for the Manchester County FA at the Communications Academy.”

Then in 2018 they announced:

“Manchester FA has now relocated their headquarters to the Etihad Campus, moving from their home of five years at Manchester City’s former youth academy site in Fallowfield.” [This was after Coote left.]

(Thanks to Anthony O’Brien for sharing these old news stories on TTT, and for the various people who checked and double-checked the websites, including Coote’s LinkedIn.)

Clearly the above websites seem legit, with live links.

Now, if a guy from the Midlands had worked for a Liverpudlian football authority for four years – that was based at Melwood! – I think opposition fans would have questions to ask; as to, if he is in any way connected to Liverpool, the city, and even the club.

Even if not in nefarious ways, it seems odd that Coote’s Manchester FA past, based at the City complex, has been memory-holed.

At the very least, we can say that Coote is Manchester-connected, beyond all doubt.

Now, if Coote had not been so weird in his officiating of Liverpool, had not called Klopp a German cunt, had not had various accusations relating to cocaine use on duty, and hadn’t now had accusations of spot-fixing, then none of this would be as powerful.

Even if some of us said his data and his decisions looked dodgy from the start.

We are also not to damn others by association with Coote, but equally, you’d want to wonder about his friends, peers and colleagues within the officiating fraternity, and any shared hatreds, habits, tendencies, and so on.

If Coote was loose-lipped about hating Klopp, etc., and if he was loose-nostrilled about the old Bolivian marching powder, then what did he talk about with his mates in the reffing ranks? Did they sympathise with him?

For what it’s worth, and to be clear, Chris Kavanagh’s data is the only Mancunian-connected VAR data that doesn’t look especially suspicious.

And Anthony Taylor, who I think has improved as a ref over the years, has only ever VARred 13 games in total, and most did not involve any of the biggest clubs discussed here.

Even so, Kavanagh’s data is hardly pro-Liverpool. And in the biggest call of his career, he “helped” Man City in the past.

But on the whole, Manchester-connected VARs are well off the charts in terms of how they treat certain teams from … Manchester.

But I’ll share the data later in the piece, and you can all decide for yourselves.

Republic of Mancunia

Obviously in light of Coote’s disgrace, I was thinking that they’d* never appoint Kavanagh, whom he appears to have worked closely with at the Manchester FA, to Liverpool vs Man City, nor would they dare appoint Paul Tierney, chief Klopp-hater – or touch-line arguer (along with Coote) – to be VAR.

(* Who are they? Who appoints the match officials? “The Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL) appoints the referees”)

With Tierney, after 24 matches, never given Liverpool an overturn as a VAR; when there is a clear correlation between the number of games VARred and the frequency of a need to overturn something (before even listing all the actual things he didn’t overturn), as I will get onto.

Twenty-four matches, with zero overturns for, three against (all the Manchester clubs); and a failure to overturn the later overturned red card against Alexis Mac Allister (arguably a fourth overturn against Liverpool in that he didn’t overturn what he should have overturned) suggest that Tierney is maybe not the best suited to the role.

Especially when we can all name calls he should have given Liverpool but didn’t, and especially when even Roy Keane and Gary Neville said his calls against Liverpool for Manchester United were inexplicable.

Kavanagh is also often kept away from City games; maybe as he worked at the City complex/campus with Coote? Just 11 games as a ref for Kavanagh for City games, and just seven as a VAR, which is less than half his other appointment levels.

• Liverpool 16

• Man City 7

• Man United 13

• Chelsea 15

• Arsenal 13

And obviously they wouldn’t send the very same pair to Merseyside as the ones that literally handed City the 2022 title, and for which Everton (but not Liverpool) got an apology?

“Kavanagh failed to advise the referee, Paul Tierney, over a handball by Rodri which would have given Everton a late chance of a penalty”.

No, they’d never do that.

Nor the very same pair who clusterfucked their way through Spurs vs Liverpool in 2021/22, not sending off Harry Kane for a proper leg-breaker on Andy Robertson (had the defender not jumped so his weight was off the ground, then it would have snapped his shin), not giving Diogo Jota a clear penalty when absolutely clotheslined, and then sending off Andy Robertson.

They would obviously find the most neutral people for this vital match, where Liverpool could pull away (or be hauled back in), after someone who worked as a referee trainer in Manchester with Kavanagh and is a peer of Tierney called Jürgen Klopp a ‘German cunt’, in a discussion about hating Scousers (amongst other ills).

Oh, wait.

Before all the reactionary, data-blind, knee-jerk talk of there being *no* bias, the bias is provable and off the charts.

VAR Overturn Rates Are Predictable

• 2,010 games VARred (2019-11th Nov 2024), all clubs, all VARs

• 348 subjective overturns

• Another 272 objective overturns, involving offsides, ball out of play, inside/outside box, encroachment, as “measurement” calls

• 5.78 games per subjective overturn

• However, for the best teams, overturns are slightly more frequent in general, but not by much; a ratio of roughly 6:5.

First, you need to strip out objective decisions, which are almost half of all VAR calls.

We all accept that most offsides are correctly offside, bar a few bad gaffes (none worse than Darren England denying a Liverpool goal, but we’re not looking at those). We accept the line calls, as they are measured with actual lines, that these days are better; and if the foul is inside or outside the area we have to accept, as we did at the weekend.

As ever, the decisions that were waved away are impossible to list, without rewatching every game.

But there should not be holes in the data so alarming that it’s hard to find a rational explanation.

Below is a graph that shows the number of games VARred by each official, and the number of overturns made.

As you can see, almost all gather closely to the linear trendline, with just two relative outliers.

Some refs give decisions a little less frequently, some a little more frequently. No one is off the charts. Most are close to the line that represents the average.

Remove the two outliers (Jonathan Moss was too overturn-happy, Peter Bankes is more avoidant), and the model goes to an r2 value of 0.8554, or 86%. So basically, if you do a certain number of games you can expect a certain number of decisions, For and Against.

Seven of these VARs have done over 100 games each, some over 150.

(All data used is correct up to 11th November 2024, before the most recent international break, and the point of publishing, only excludes the past weekend’s games.)

So these are hefty sample sizes, with the average number of VAR games 69, for 29 officials.

As you can see, the more games each VAR does, the more overturns they make. In general, no one has done 20-30 games and made no overturns.

But for my predictive model, that I’ll get onto, I was more generous to non-Main Five, and just split it 50-50, to say that for X number of games you should get Y number of decisions For and Y number of decisions Against.

Just the Decisions

I will list each and every decision at the foot of this article, but I’ll get onto the graphs and data.

As noted, we can’t quantify all the VAR overturns not made, (albeit we can add Tierney’s failure to overturn as that itself was overturned). We also can’t say how many decisions the ref got right.

But it seems that every 5-6 games, a VAR intervention is required, based on 2,010 games.

Manchester-Connected VARs For Main Five Clubs

• 35 Manchester-connected overturns For

• 19 Manchester-connected overturns Against

So, 35 overturns from Manchester-Connected VARs have favoured the Main Five, which is my old Main Four (Man City, Man United, Chelsea, Liverpool) and now with Arsenal added.

Just 18 went against, albeit again, I added a 19th for Paul Tierney failing to overturn the Mac Allister red card, just because it was so egregious.

And this is where the bias seems blindingly clear, beyond what I would think are all laws of probability.

• In 99 games, Manchester VARs gave just two overturns against Manchester clubs; both by Kavanagh in 2021.

• Remove Kavanagh and it’s 70 games, no overturns against!

• Remove a few months in 2021, and again, it’s no overturns against Manchester clubs by Manchester-connected VARs.

• In those same 99 games, a mind-blowing eighteen overturns in Manchester clubs’ favour.

Look at the left-hand bar-chart, and the top two clubs. These are the calls made by Manchester-connected refs, whereas the right bar-chart are non-Manchester refs.

I ran these past a very senior academic who subscribers to TTT, for some parsing. Here’s his reply:

“For these you can carry out a statistical test – a chi-squared test (pronounced kai)

“This tests whether the data differ significantly from what you would expect if all teams were treated similarly. I’ve carried out the tests online and attach screenshots of the results.

“These show that for the non-Manchester-connected refs [right chart] there is no difference – ‘p’ is roughly 0.5: the chances of getting a data set like this by chance alone is about 50:50.”

“But for the Manchester-connected refs [left chart] the results ARE significant – p is less than 0.05: the chances of getting a result like this by chance are less than 1 in 20 – the conventional definition of statistically significant.”

So, there you have it.

Statistically significant weirdness from the Manchester-connected VARs, that just happen to hugely benefit Manchester clubs, with Liverpool being the only club they’ve given more overturns against than for, is worth noting.

Again, apart from Chris Kavanagh in 2021, once for Man United and once for Man City, no Manchester-connected VARs have ever overturned against the Manchester clubs.

That includes David Coote in 25 combined games as VAR, and Paul Tierney in 38 combined games as VAR, for United and City.

Meanwhile, in 24 games as VAR on Liverpool games, as stated, Tierney has never given Liverpool an overturn, and his balance is 0 For, 4 Against.

This is the man chosen to be VAR this weekend.

Paranoid, moi?!

In fairness, the bulk of the trend was in the early, “anonymous VAR” days. Hot-mics are now more likely to provide more honest officiating, albeit the trend, while not as strong as earlier on, clearly persists.

When Manchester-connected refs do Liverpool games, the swing of Big Decisions for the Reds is massively skewed towards Anfield.

Instead of slightly more favourable calls at home, which is the normal pattern for all clubs, it’s even more at home, and almost none away. As refs, sometimes they seem to try too hard at Anfield to look non-Mancunian, whereas the average ref (who is fairer to Liverpool as a VAR) will try too hard to look like they won’t bow to Kop pressure when at the stadium.

As a ref, Anthony Taylor has given quite a few Big Decisions to Liverpool, which is good, albeit a fair chunk of them were given by the VAR. (Sending off Paul Pogba at Old Trafford, for one, and two clear handballs were signalled by Chris Kavanagh, when he could tell what a handball was.)

The further away from Anfield the Manchester-connected set move, including Stockley Park, the far worse they get.

Ideally, just don’t have them do Liverpool or Manchester clubs.

It’s that simple, if you can rejig the other officials. Make life easier for them, and easier for us, as fans who demand integrity.

Manchester-Connected VARs vs Expected Overturns

Based on an expected VAR intervention For every 12th game and one going Against every 12th game (given that the average for both For and Against is roughly every sixth game), I created the following graph.

I added groupings of VARs (marked ***) to the mix, with the sample sizes as high as 99 for these, which is still smaller than the samples for seven VARs, but above the sample size average (69 games).

Some of the groupings are in twice, once listing overturns For, and then Against.

The chart should hopefully speak for itself, with the graphing software creating the standard deviation lines; with Manchester-connected VARring Manchester clubs almost four standard deviations away from the mean, which I think is only 0.1% likely by accident.

But I’ll admit that, unlike the chi-squared analysis, this is not something I fully understand or have had verified.

But the gist is clear. And Coote fits right in to the Mancunian trends as well.

Coote now says:

“Whatever issues I may have had in my personal life they have never affected my decision-making on the field.

“I have always held the integrity of the game in the highest regard, refereeing matches and to the best of my ability.”

The data seems to disagree.

Certainly his record of ‘missing’ big decisions for Liverpool (not covered in the data) but giving things against Liverpool (in the data), was startling, until he was removed from Liverpool games in late 2020.

He only returned in 2023, after which point he finally gave a couple of (clear) decisions to Liverpool, but also inexplicably didn’t give the most blatant handball as the VAR, nor the most blatant DOGSO as the ref (in just his third league game doing Liverpool as a ref).

That DOGSO on Mo Salah was so startling that ex-refs spoke out in amazement, days before the excrement hit the fast-spinning thing.

That was before people knew of him calling Klopp a cunt, as in return a mate of his said nasty things about everyone hating Scousers, and before the allegations of cocaine use (including on duty), and accusations now about spot-fixing; and before I knew he worked for the Manchester FA, training refs, based at the Manchester City complex for four years, 2012-2016.

Before all of that was known, he just looked iffy to the eye test and the data smelled funny.

Maybe he’s just one of the unluckiest men in the world.

But let’s be grown ups here, and wake up to the sad, but true, reality of modern life.

We’re beyond the age where we can blindly trust the refs to not be as deep in banter and bias as the average fan.

And given what “captain sensible” (Coote, according to the incredibly foot-in-mouth ex-ref Peter Walton) has allegedly been getting up to, we’re no longer talking about unimpeachable characters, but in some cases deeply flawed men, who you can trust about as far as you can throw them – and in my case, I can barely throw a cat*.

(*Note: I have never thrown a cat. I am not Kurt Zouma!)

Appendix: Data, Decisions, Etc.

Liverpool have Manchester-connected VAR’s c.1/3rd of the time, while the Manchester clubs each have them c.1/4th of the time.

Apart from Mike Dean a few times starting in lockdown, no one with any remote connection to Liverpool is allowed, or prepared, to do Liverpool games.

List Overturns by Manchester Connected VARs, For (Main Five Clubs)

Click to enlarge

List Overturns by Manchester Connected VARs, Against (Main Five Clubs)

Click to enlarge

All VARs, Games and Overturns

Anything else?

Probably.