Paul Tierney, Conspiracy Theories About Refs/VARs, and Data Over Paranoia

Conspiracies clouds their true failings, biases, motivated reasoning, vendettas, post-hoc rationalisations and cognitive dissonance

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By my reckoning, Chelsea at home will be the 50th time Paul Tierney has taken charge of a Liverpool game as either referee or VAR, and to say he’s been controversial is like saying Joey Barton isn’t keen on female commentators.

The Premier League:

“Referee: Paul Tierney, Assistants: James Mainwaring, Scott Ledger. Fourth official: Andy Madley. VAR: John Brooks. Assistant VAR: Sian Massey-Ellis.”

As such, I’ll mark it with an article, updating the litany of issues that make this man unsuitable for games involving Liverpool FC, and looking at the general trends with referees and the club.

While I’m tired of focusing on this issue, and will only now do so occasionally, the issue clearly isn’t going away. (I wanted to do more with this piece but I think I cover enough to keep you busy.)

This has nothing to do with conspiracies but cold, hard data, and objectively weird incidents that are massively outliers in the game of football. Conspiracy thinking can only make it worse, albeit I do appreciate how it can feel like some kind of plan.

(And it wouldn’t surprise me if in 20 years we found out that a ref or two had been corrupt in some way, given the billions involved in the game and the billions some owners possess, but there’s no evidence right now. Just a non-transparent process and some odd decisions on a regular basis.)

It will be Tierney’s 28th game as ref, as well as 22 as the VAR, with 48 of those being in the Premier League.

In addition, 48 have been since 2018, with all of the VARs since 2019, obviously. One of those games since 2018 as a ref was the FA Cup, leaving 47 Premier League games that Tierney has reffed or VARred for Liverpool since September 2018.

I’ve listed my issues with Tierney several times, but the reading only gets worse. And we can’t quantify half of the decisions, as they don’t show up.

That he has a running feud with Jürgen Klopp should be enough to rule him out; not because managers should get to choose, but because the data suggests it affects Tierney.

As I always say, he could be the nicest guy on the planet, and have no sinister motives for shafting Liverpool, but across the more-than-large-enough sample of 49 games we can see just about every kind of alarming pattern you could hope to see.

If this was a betting pattern, when adding his refereeing data to his VAR data, you’d be highly suspicious, and probably decide not to keep putting everyone together in that situation.

While all fans can be paranoid, I’ve spent years collating and analysing the objective data, and in addition, there are some highly irregular incidents involving Tierney.

Before getting onto the data, the weirdness includes:

• His frequent assistant and ally (Constantine Hatzidakis) elbowing a Liverpool player.

• Blowing for half-time six seconds before the end of the 45th minute in the first half at Old Trafford, when Liverpool’s Sadio Mané was three seconds away from the Man United goal. (I must have watched 20,000 games of football and never seen it happen before or since.)

• As far as I understand it, being the only Premier League VAR this season who failed to get the correct decision relating to the 39 red cards dished out (as of a few weeks ago), with his inability (aided by ... Constantine Hatzidakis) to overturn the red card given to Alexis Mac Allister. All other 38 Premier League red cards were upheld.

• Giving one of the worst refereeing displays ever seen when not sending off Harry Kane for a terrible studs-up lunge into Andy Robertson, not giving a penalty when Diogo Jota was clotheslined, yet sending off Robertson later in the game. (The display between ref and VAR that was even more shambolic was again at Spurs, two seasons later.) “If Harry Kane’s lunge on Andy Robertson isn’t a red card then I’m not sure what is,” ex-ref Mark Clattenburg wrote. Indeed. But Kane was the England captain, and that’s another kind of bias as can be seen with English players winning more penalties than expected and conceding fewer, based on a study of 600 penalties I undertook a few years ago.

• Never giving Liverpool a single subjective decision in 22 games as the VAR, but giving three against them, all to Manchester clubs, and so soft that even Gary Neville was amazed. (Disallowing a Liverpool goal against Man United when Virgil van Dijk jumped alongside David de Gea who simply dropped the ball; overturning a Liverpool penalty at Old Trafford when Eric Bailly’s insanely wild tackle nicked the ball but the follow-through could have broken Nat Phillips’ leg; and a soft handball at the Etihad against Joe Gomez that is less contentious but still borderline.)

• Giving Andreas Christensen only a yellow card in 2020 at Chelsea for a last-man foul, and Michael Oliver, the VAR, suggested it be upgraded to a red. So even when Tierney gave something to Liverpool, it wasn’t actually him doing so.

• In his very first game as a ref for Liverpool in 2017 his assistant disallowed a late Reds’ winner at the Kop end for an “unseeable” handball. That assistant was ... Constantine Hatzidakis.

• The last-gasp non-handball for Everton that effectively handed Man City the title in 2021/22. Everton got an apology; Liverpool did not. Everton did not suffer any lasting consequences; Liverpool did. Manchester again benefited from Tierney. (How funny that that handball, though clear, couldn’t be seen.)

• … just this week, what ex-head of refs Keith Hackett and others saw as a red card offence by the Bournemouth player Justin Kluivert not even leading to a suggestion that the ref review the incident, which was more severe than Curtis Jones’ red card that cost the Reds three points at Spurs. (A clear penalty was also ignored.)

“The PGMOL must investigate why there was no VAR intervention on that challenge by Kleivert [sic]. It should have resulted in a red card. Referee should have seen it. VAR should have acted. Poor decision making”

Rather than investigate … Tierney was immediately appointed for the next Liverpool league game!

It may have been borderline red (some say it should have been, others say not), but it wasn’t even the subject of a clear VAR review, or where the ref was asked to view it on a monitor (including with a damning still like the one below), as yet more inconsistency in the PGMOL approach, but fully consistent with Tierney’s failure to give a single foul-related VAR decision to the Reds (including overturning the Mac Allister non-foul).

Then compare that to a different still, of Curtis Jones before his foot rolled onto the ball from a low, safe tackle (below), for which he was sent off in the first half at Spurs and given a three-match ban. Rather than use the exculpatory image, they used the misleading and damning one.

Neither was intentional; one was a yellow upgraded to a red (Jones), one wasn’t even given as a free-kick (“get up Díaz”).

Tierney also ignored a clear foul on Jota as he went into the box, albeit a later foul on Bobby Clark came after the offside flag had been raised.

Two big calls against Liverpool? Pack your whistle lad, you’re off to Anfield next!

But this is getting into subjective territory. That’s why we need to look at the data.

Coincidental?

It may all be merely coincidental, but once you get past a dozen coincidences, it’s time to spare everyone the suspicion and just avoid a potential conflict of interests.

It doesn’t have to be a conspiracy, but it is fishy.

I don’t think managers should pick and choose who refs or VARs their games, but equally, if anyone, in any walk of life, had such dodgy data (even if it was purely coincidental), then changes would be made.

I don’t think people fully understand how ‘decisions’ are often reached by officials: the path of least resistance, often, such as giving free-kicks outside the box and ignoring them inside the box, or erroneously giving a free-kick immediately to one team after realising a mistake had been made in giving a free-kick to the other.

We see the mind-warping of refs and the cognitive dissonance all the time within games, but people don’t pay attention to the bigger picture, and study the data.

To me, the path of least resistance is appeasing social media and the noisiest pundits, whereas in the old days it was about appeasing the swaying masses within the stadium.

I read a Martin Samuel piece a few months ago that said that as Liverpool had a good win percentage with a certain referee (another one from Manchester ahead of a game against a Manchester club), the fans cannot complain.

But this is nonsense. Surely the more accurate way to assess a ref is by their decisions, not whether or not you end up winning the games (they could give an erroneous penalty against you every week and you win 2-1). You know, Martin, by doing some hard work, mining some data.

Plus, what if a ref always sends off your players for nothing, and yet you win? They could still serve three-game bans, and you will expend more energy in winning that match. It will also affect goal difference if you’re denied penalties, for example.

Plus, win-rates relate to what level of opposition you face. Michael Oliver is the only ref who is even vaguely generous to Liverpool, but their win rate with him is poor (less than 50%), as he does a lot of big games that Liverpool are not expected to win.

I can foretell pretty easily whether Liverpool are likely to get a Big Decision or not depending on who the ref and the VAR is; the patterns are clear.

For example, I’ve pointed out to Liverpool fans that Anthony Taylor, Mancunian and like me a proud member of the bald community, will give the Reds Big Decisions; but mostly at Anfield, where he bucks the general trend of almost all other refs (bar Michael Oliver) by being more generous than normal.

However, away from Anfield, Taylor is less generous than normal.

As I discovered last year, while most refs at Anfield have to show they’re not biased towards Liverpool (to appease the masses), a Mancunian ref generally has to prove they’re not biased against Liverpool.

The same applies to Scouse refs in Manchester. And it all inverts in away games, where, Scouse or Mancunian, they treat the ‘enemy’ Mancunian and Scouse teams more harshly. The pattern is absolute stonewall, as you might say.

And this was before Taylor gave Liverpool two Anfield penalties recently.

(Albeit that only highlight how ungenerous Taylor is for Liverpool in away games, but at least he’s generous at Anfield, as one of only two refs who are, and so for that I will defend him.)

It’s very odd, but very human, in its way. And it’s very wrong in terms of fairness, even if it’s not conscious or preplanned.

Mike Dean, who was unusually harsh on Liverpool in terms of Big Decision balance, also showed another kind of bias: cronyism, by not overturning a mate’s bad decision. Once he had admitted what we knew was the truth he was forced to backtrack. Now he works on Sky and does the same, saying “the ref got that right” every time he’s asked, if it’s a mate.

Rather than address this fundamental flaw with referees essentially marking each other’s homework (which led to so many issues within police reviews) we got doublespeak.

Home/away also where Paul Tierney deviates even more from the norm, in his consistent ‘deviancy’ as far as Liverpool are concerned. He’s given just two Big Decisions to the Reds in 14 Anfield league games, yet we can all list many that he simply ignored.

Generally, the more experienced the ref, the more ‘normal’ his Big Decision rate will be for the Reds, as you can see for all the Main Four clubs, as the greater the number of games moves towards the right of the scatterplot, the closer to the ‘norm’ on the horizontal line the Balance of Big Decisions even out at.

Proven refs like Michael Oliver and Anthony Taylor seem more secure in just giving decisions.

All clubs have some refs who seem less generous to them, but the point with Liverpool is that it’s virtually every ref, bar those two. And Liverpool keep getting the bad refs.

Less-proven refs are absolutely terrible for Liverpool.

These are all the referees for Liverpool in the Klopp era in the Premier League, comparing their actual Big Decision rate per game vs the ‘expected’ norm (the number of games they’ve done are in brackets).

The new ones are often, as I see it, trying to prove themselves strong enough to ‘defeat’ the Kop and the Klopp, in the way a weak official in any walk of life will hide behind authority or a badge to justify bad decisions, whereas a strong one has nothing to prove, and will admit to mistakes and seek to be fair.

If Klopp offends officials then they can book him; not ignore penalties and red cards in his team’s favour.

If you realise that a lot of calls in football are 50-50 or 60-40, then an official can go with what seems most comfortable. Even 70-30s become ‘seen them given/seen them not given’.

How many decisions in football that lead to penalties and red cards are 100% clear and obvious? Most of the time the official can find a reason for post-hoc justification, as we see when the VARs have to explain decisions, and we get three, maybe four evolving explanations to fit with the changing evidence.

As noted, Liverpool have only been given absolutely stonewall penalties by Tierney in his 25 games, and just two at that. Both were ‘total wipeout’ penalties, that are hard to ignore. Absolute full-on, 100% thumping fouls. These are quite rare, and if that’s the bar with Tierney and Liverpool, no wonder the Reds suffer so much.

(Whereas sometimes a ‘soft’ penalty can be just as much of a penalty – a trip is often deemed ‘soft’, but only because the contact is soft; the disruption of an attack can be massive. If an attempt to play the ball misses the ball and plays the man, and the man is put off balance, then it should be a penalty irrespective of staying on his feet or not – often the ‘dive’ is merely to alert the ref, otherwise the striker is ‘punished’. Again, that’s this weird path of least resistance thing where the ref will wave it away, unless the striker forces his hand, and I don’t mind that; I said so when Aleksandar Mitrović did so in the first game of last season, when Virgil van Dijk clipped him – the Fulham striker could have stayed on his feet, but chose to collapse in a heap. That’s a penalty. Ditto the Newcastle keeper who admitted to clipping Diogo Jota on New Year’s Day, but Jota was called a cheat for then going over.)

It also took almost 20 games for Tierney’s first Big Decision to Liverpool to be given (aside from the one given on his behalf by the VAR in 2020), and came within mere minutes of his close assistant elbowing Andy Robertson, which if done to another player (a media darling) would have itself created an outcry; that it was “that big baby” Robertson (according to Roy Keane) made it okay.

Players should not be touching officials, and if you want to make that clear, don’t have officials elbowing players. (I can’t believe more wasn’t made of this, but Liverpool actually helped Hatzidakis and, by association, Tierney, who should have sent his own assistant off for violent conduct.)

In my study of Big Decisions, it’s where the 50-50s, 60-40s and 70-30s are given or not given that skews an official’s data. As these incidents exist in most games, if not every game. After all, a Top Four side ‘should’ be getting a Big Decision in their favour every three games, based on the past eight years of data; and a Balance of Big Decisions of +5.5 per season.

This is where I feel you can spot biases, and if not biases, some kind of reluctance.

For instance, as noted, Tierney has never given Liverpool a single subjective decision in his 22 VAR games (just offside overturns), but given three against the Reds, including some that almost no other official would give (and all for Manchester clubs). And that doesn’t include a huge mistake this season.

As of a couple of weeks ago, 39 players had been sent off in the Premier League in 2023/24.

The only one where the red card was rescinded? Alexis Mac Allister vs Bournemouth, where the VAR’s job was to intervene and say that a terrible mistake had been made. Tierney, assisted that day by his Robertson-elbowing mate, did nothing.

“VAR has to overturn!” – except Tierney didn’t. Again, Tierney. Not the faceless ‘VAR’. Tierney.

The only undeniably perfectly good Premier League goal this season ruled out by incompetence?

Liverpool’s vital strike at Spurs, which remains the only league game the Reds have lost since April 2023, and where the Reds had two harsh red cards as well.

The ref, Simon Hooper, was almost as bad as Darren England, the VAR. Hooper is now back on the Liverpool beat.

So, that’s arguably the two biggest/clearest Big Decision mistakes of the season, both against Liverpool.

Which doesn’t mean the Reds haven’t had slightly fortuitous decisions for and against (like all teams), but those two have helped to skew the league table.

The same is true to a lesser degree about what Howard Webb admitted was a clear handball by Arsenal’s Martin Ødegaard in the top-of-the-table clash a few weeks ago, but as Liverpool equalised soon after it, I’m not as annoyed about the influence on the result, just with yet another poor Anfield decision that went against the Reds, who continue to get far fewer home penalties than other big clubs compared across the Klopp era.

We also need to look at the general patterns, and the inability of so many refs to handle Liverpool games.

As I’ve noted before and as you can see in the earlier graph, of the 23 refs to do the Reds in the Premier League era under Klopp, the more games the ref does (bar three exceptions), the closer to ‘normal’ his Big Decision distribution.

But of the rest, almost none are more generous than expected; almost all are less generous than expected.

Paranoia?

Now, it may be my paranoia that the other refs and VARs who have most troubled Klopp and Liverpool in recent times have popped up vs Arsenal (David Coote, who failed to give the aforementioned clear handball, as confirmed by Howard Webb, to Liverpool as the VAR); in the cup semifinal vs Fulham at home (Coote again, now as ref); in the second leg vs Fulham (Simon Hooper, in charge of the debacle at Spurs); and now Tierney again, paired with John Brooks as the VAR.

Brooks has done nothing but punish Liverpool since Klopp berated him as the 4th official when Tierney was in charge of the Spurs match last season, when Mo Salah was almost rugby-tackled twice for no free-kick in front of the dugout, and all hell broke loose afterwards. Klopp knew that Salah gets almost no free-kicks compared to other players, as fouls on him seem to be allowed.

If I had to name the officials who are likely to have a really big beef with Klopp, I would say Tierney, Coote and Brooks, while Hooper has done more harm than good.

This – below – wasn’t given as a red card the next time Brooks visited Anfield, as fairly compelling proof of something getting in the way of any fair-minded thinking. It wasn’t just a high boot, but a boot moving towards the opponent.

And with my data, contrary to some impressions, I would add Anthony Taylor to the good books, not the bad books (with an asterisk).

Big Decision Bottler

So, I collated the red, yellow card and penalty data for each game via Transfermartk: for 1,200+ league matches, 2015-2023; 638 of which also had VAR.

And across those 1,200+ games, 88 referee/club combinations.

These were for the four most successful clubs in the Jürgen Klopp era: Man City, Liverpool, Chelsea and Man United. I called these the Main Four, as for that period they were.

More can be read on this on my full study, but it’s a long read and may put some people off.

On average, a Main Four team gets 1.68 Big Decisions ‘For’ for every one Big Decision ‘Against’, across the +1,200-game sample (with some double-counting for head-to-heads between the Main Four).

• 1.68:1

• Or, for every 17 For, 10 Against.

• Or, a +5.51 Big Decision Balance Per Season.

Over smaller samples this can obviously be skewed, but it seems fairly natural.

Man City should have the best Balance of Big Decisions based on eight years of xG, but Liverpool should be 2nd. And if you average the xG for and against for City, United and Chelsea, it’s worse than Liverpool’s.

The bigger the sample for each ref grows, the closer to the ‘expected Big Decision’ outcome it gets.

Again, except for Tierney doing Liverpool.

As a ref he’s not statistically the worst, but he has given Liverpool two penalties in 25 league games (or 27 in all comps), and never given Liverpool a penalty as the VAR; but has taken them away.

It’s a combination across what will become 50 games that is the alarming part, when compared to a) other refs who do Liverpool and b) his record for the other three of the Main Four.

Weirdly, in 22 and 19 games respectively for the Manchester clubs (as referee) he has given five Big Decisions For City and United, two Against the pair, for a balance of +3 for each.

For Chelsea it’s 4, 2 and a +2 balance.

For Liverpool, in more games, it’s just three For (fewer than the others), Three Against (more than the others), and a balance of zero.

Again, that’s weird. Not super-weird, but add it to the various other weirdnesses and it’s alarmingly weird.

Over the course of a 38-game season (and Tierney is getting closer to that full-season tally in the league as a ref for the Reds), that would mean a greater than expected Balance of Big Decisions for the Manchester clubs, a slightly worse than expected balance for Chelsea, and a much worse than expected balance for Liverpool.

(That’s before how iffy his VAR stats are regarding the Manchester clubs vs Liverpool, and as noted, all the other strange behaviour.)

Difference to Expected Big Decisions Pro-Rata 38 League Games – Paul Tierney

• Man United +4.05

• Man City +3.59

• Chelsea -1.55

• Liverpool -4.12

Tierney and Liverpool, 25 games (PL)

• Actual Benefiting 3

• Actual Against 3

• Actual Balance of Extra Big Decisions 0

• (And one of the Benefiting was via Michael Oliver as the VAR)

Tierney and Man City, 22 games (PL)

• Actual Benefiting 5

• Actual Against 2

• Actual Balance of Extra Big Decisions +3

Tierney and Man United 19 games (PL)

• Actual Benefiting 5

• Actual Against 2

• Actual Balance of Extra Big Decisions +3

Tierney and Chelsea 16 games (PL)

• Actual Benefiting 4

• Actual Against 2

• Actual Balance of Extra Big Decisions +2

To put it another way, he tends to show a fairly consistent record for Man City, Man United and Chelsea, that fits with the vague expected model, and reverses that trend for Liverpool.

Then, add the VAR decisions given (and not those not given), and Tierney is at -3 for Liverpool, when the outcome for 50-odd games should be over +7. (And the VAR calls by Tierney further helped the Manchester club, too.)

As such, I don’t want him near Liverpool games, for obvious reasons. No one should abuse him, but the Anfield crowd may want to point out why they distrust him.

I don’t know if sharing this data helps, but after my highlighting it constantly, at least the Reds finally ended a +300-game run without a beneficial second yellow dating back to 2015, and like London buses, three came along this season. (But so did four reds for the Reds.)

Alarming Trends

Tierney is of course part of a general trend, with only Michael Oliver of the active referees more generous than expected to the Reds, and then only Anthony Taylor clearly better than a neutral outcome. (Not as high as expected, but still more For than Against.) Craig Pawson just squeaks in above the neutral line, but below the expected line.

These are the active referees, and their actual Big Decisions for Liverpool vs Expected (183 games).

(The pattern was similar for the 100+ done by refs who have now retired.)

Tierney isn’t the worst per game, but he has the biggest sample sizes outside of the ‘fair’ refs at the top.

And as we know with Tierney, it’s so much deeper than the data can delve into, and involves VARring as well as refereeing.

And unless he is actively seeking these appointments, he should not be put in this position; and if he is actively seeking these appointments, then what the actual fuck?!