Referees Treat LFC Very Differently – Big Data Suggests "Weirdness" From Officials/PGMOL

FREE READ - Lots and lots and lots of data – all show LFC to be a 'special case'

Like you, I’m half sick to death of talking about referees and the PGMOL, and half infuriated into fixation by their constant failings and the serious weirdness in the data.

Refereeing is a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it (better).

However, before I swear myself off this subject (for this season, at least), I wanted to leave the best covers-it-all piece up I could, even if it’s impossible to catch every detail.

(I have two football-only related pieces lined up, one to go live before the Leicester game.)

Then, if Liverpool have three clear penalties denied by a Mancunian ref in a vital game in the remainder of this season, you’ll at least be able to refer to the previous data, in this piece.

What follows is a deep-dive that is data-driven, which shows various weird anomalies when it comes to Liverpool FC and referees; some stuff I've covered before; some stuff I've updated; and some new stuff, plus a section by Andrew Beasley (and some of his data is relied upon in other sections, while I have drawn upon my own databases that use Transfermarkt detailed match-by-match stats on officials, and other sources, such as Opta, are quoted where appropriate. All data is deemed correct, in terms of being exported directly from those websites).

It's not so much about a couple of unusual things, as that can happen – weird shit, c’est la vie, etc.; this is an article about Liverpool repeatedly being massively outliers in how officials (and the PGMOL, who trains and appoints them) treat them, based on objective data.

Obviously I’m biased, but also fed up of watching refs ruin games, including the vandalism of momentum and flow that we saw at the weekend, which was the last kick in the teeth.

(It’s not just time-wasting, as the time may – albeit may not – be added later; it’s disruption and vandalism. It’s destruction of a game of football.)

Again, the data is objective, albeit my conclusions have a subjective slant.

But anyone is welcome to dig through the websites that host the information and deep-dive the data themselves.

(EDIT: in case it isn’t clear, despite me mentioning it at various points in the piece, this relates to the Jürgen Klopp era, 2015-onwards. Liverpool have had more ‘generous’ periods of refereeing in the past, which I’ve mentioned many times. For example, I often point out that since 2004, having a foreign manager has corresponded with finishing lower on penalty rankings than league position – which will again be true this season with Liverpool 5th in the table and 10th in the penalty rankings – whereas the British managers between 2010-2015 saw the exact opposite, finishing higher in the penalty rankings than in the league table, such as 2nd in the league and 1st for penalties under Brendan Rodgers in 2013/14, when the team had more English attackers, who won the majority of those penalties. That Liverpool won a lot of penalties in the distant past is not the point of this piece, as officiating should be based on the games as they happen, not as a way of redressing what happened decades ago; indeed, in the piece I refer to the still-held myth that Liverpool get too many penalties, because impressions can often be carried over from ancient history and stop people making fair decisions in the present moment. Also, Klopp is the manager, and thus it’s a look at the officiating during his tenure, with many of the refs covered still actively doing Liverpool games.)

Some facts about officials and Liverpool FC

You get outliers.

But this many outliers is weird.

I’ll go on to explain these further, but first, let’s outline some facts:

• Liverpool get the fewest penalties in relation to actual goals scored, ranking 24th out of 24 for the Premier League teams to have played enough qualifying seasons in the top flight (three) in that time. (2015-2023)

• Liverpool get a relatively low number of penalties per season compared to other teams, but crucially, get a far lower percentage of penalties at home when compared with the best teams. (To me, a normal, modest amount away, but an abnormally low amount at home.)

• A staggering 3-4x more referees are averse to giving Liverpool penalties than the number of similar refs for any rival club. As such, it’s an appointment problem, especially if the PGMOL are aware of this.

• Greater Manchester referees are statistically overly generous to Manchester clubs, and statistically overly miserly to Liverpool. This surprised me, as I was clearly too naive to believe such an obvious suggestion could be true.

• Liverpool have had to wait longest out of any top-flight club to have a player sent off against them for a second yellow card; so long, in fact, that the player was … Sadio Mané. (Playing for Southampton.) Almost all clubs have had at least five players sent off against them for two yellows in that time; some have as many as a dozen-or-so. The second yellow is interesting, as it’s a bit more subjective – it’s about how the ref feels, whereas straight red cards can often be harder to deny, and also, there’s VAR to jump in (but only a ref can give a second yellow, so he’s safe to ‘bottle it’, as it were).

• As we’ve shown before, Mo Salah is in a league of his own when it comes to not getting free-kicks. As an outlier he lies so outlying that he’s lying out in another dimension.

• Liverpool waste the least time in the Premier League, according to Opta, yet have more bookings for time-wasting than the worst time-wasting teams in the Premier League; and the Reds’ bookings for time-wasting were simply for taking a normal amount of time. Again, this is subjective, about how a ref feels. It is not timed, just a sense of time that can be warped by emotions. This is something Andrew will focus on later in the piece, after the debacle of the ref-killed-a-good-game fixture with Brentford.

• By some distance, Liverpool get far fewer different refs at home games than any other Premier League team (2020-23), who all get a similar amount to each other. This means more likelihood for animosity to arise, as familiarity breeds contempt. It also means Liverpool get a lesser mix of styles, and Premier League refs differ wildly in their approach to the game (as can be seen in their stats). So if some teams get ‘homer’ refs and Liverpool do not, that’s a distortion. To me, it’s a handful of refs who have done the most damage; not all the refs.

• Liverpool have had the same referee seven times in a single season (38 games) on a number of occasions, which almost never happens at all for other clubs. Liverpool had Paul Tierney a 7th time this season, by game 33, even though it was clear there were major issues between Liverpool FC and Tierney.

• The only player to be struck by an official (in all my time watching top-flight English football) was Tierney’s assistant clearly (not “apparently”) elbowing Andy Robertson; Tierney was up next at Anfield again. While the linesman rightly apologised to Robertson via Zoom (and it was a moment of madness that I wouldn’t have wanted to see destroy his career), it’s interesting that an official elbowed a Liverpool player, and effectively got no real punishment; while the ref who should have sent his own official off as violent conduct applies to everyone, booked Robertson, and was given the next Anfield fixture. It suggests a ‘fight’ mindset that officials bring to Anfield, perhaps driven by the PGMOL, who chooses which refs to send where.

All of the refs covered in this piece may all be fine upstanding men, albeit it seems statistically unlikely that all are as pure as the driven snow and bereft of any biases, petty grievances and pressurising friends, families and neighbours.

I read a major columnist say that it would be naive to think a certain referee doesn’t like Liverpool FC; I’d say it’s beyond naive to think otherwise. (Which isn’t to say that the ref 100% doesn’t like Liverpool FC, but he certainly doesn’t seem to like its manager.)

If we accept that referees are human, we have to accept all their human failings, and look at the data; just as you’d look at the data of a well-meaning surgeon who keeps accidentally killing patients, and chalks each one down as a ‘one-off’. (See the book Black Box Thinking.)

We use data to tell us about players and what we might otherwise miss; but few people look at refereeing data for weird patterns. There are very few examples of bad refereeing in this article – it’s mostly a look at how generous or miserly referees are, and how differently they seem to officiate for Liverpool.

(Again, I wouldn’t want to be a ref, and I don’t want to see refs abused – just not paid fortunes to do a bad job if they are not good enough.)

Twisted Distribution of Refs

This may not seem a big deal, but a key point to my thesis is that Liverpool are given too few different refs, especially at Anfield, and a good proportion of these refs seem to have major issues with Liverpool in terms of a) how other refs referee the Reds, and b) how these same refs referee other clubs.

I made a bubble-plot for this as I was going to combine other metrics, but it actually shows the spacial chasm by having the total on both axes.

This is three seasons of data (two full seasons and in Liverpool’s case, with one home game left this season).

These are the Premier League’s ever-present clubs since 2020, and while two referees are from Merseyside (and a third now resides there), that still doesn’t explain why the same set of referees are sent to Anfield on a regular basis; to the point where Liverpool are massive outliers.

Before I checked the data, I had a growing sense of the PGMOL sending battle-hardened refs to Anfield, as if the Kop was still as intimidating as in the 1970s. Not only battle-hardened, but almost paranoid refs.

For most league games, Anfield is just like any other ground; sometimes it’s pretty quiet. European nights are something different entirely, but this is only the Premier League we’re talking about in this piece. No cup data, no European data.

(The myth of Anfield and the Kop was raised when Diogo Jota scored a winner against Spurs immediately after they equalised in the 93rd minute, but it felt like the stadium was quite muted and stunned, and not some magical case of the Kop sucking the ball in – it was Lucas Moura with a gift of a backpass. There was no cauldron to cow the referee.)

It’s as if the PGMOL are happy to send rookies and the lesser-ranked refs to all grounds, albeit with a slightly smaller pool for Big Six clubs.

But Liverpool seems like a Special Assignment. Go there, keep it tight, deny penalties, ignore fouls on Mo Salah, penalise any Fabinho tackle as a foul, and any foul as a yellow card (that said, he got lucky in one cup game when he should have had a straight red).

Averaging two fewer refs per home season (over the past three seasons) may not seem like a huge difference, but the plot above shows how much of an outlier it remains, when the rest of the clubs are clustered together, especially the Big Six and Newcastle. Two is not a huge number, but when the full range is about 4.5, it’s nearly halfway.

Remember, the greater variety of refs the better, for the integrity of the game. Mixing it up as much as possible is the healthiest way.

I did wonder if Liverpool get a lot of referees from Greater Manchester to lower the carbon footprint, but Everton get a greater variety of refs (an average of 11 different ones for home games per season). So it can’t be that (and it shouldn’t ever be that; refs should be sent far and wide.)

Generally, everyone gets between 11-13 refs for their home games.

Also, the PGMOL just sent the hitherto best ref Michael Oliver (who can’t do Newcastle games, as he supports them) to Saudi Arabia to do a game, as a favour for the people who own the club he supports. So, no ‘keep it local’ there.

Clearly it can be tricky picking refs due to their allegiances ruling them out (Oliver), or being needed for a bigger game somewhere else.

But it still doesn’t explain why Liverpool are alone as outliers.

If you are limited in the number of referees you get, and those refs are unfavourable, then that’s the opposite of the Italian refereeing scandal (choosing favourable refs), or what Barcelona were possibly doing around referees, too.

Even if it’s just as ‘honest’ as the refs you get are generally less generous in style, if you’re the home team, you are losing the proven statistical home advantage that home teams get.

(Various academic studies confirm that home advantage exists in football, in terms of decisions a team gets, through a combination of teams being more likely to play well at home, where they feel comfortable and have the backing of fans – unless the fans are restless – and where officials tend towards being ‘homers’. So if you get sent anti-‘homers’ – or “I’m too tough to bow to the pressure” type refs – that might explain things. If refs try to take away the advantage of Anfield but do not do the same at other grounds, then that is a distortion.)

Without a diversity of refereeing styles, Liverpool get stuck with the same bunch, where grudges build up, and where they possibly arrive looking for trouble.

Like Paul Tierney this season, Martin Atkinson was given an outlying seven Liverpool games in 2018/19, many in the run-in.

(I’ve found just five instances of a referee doing the same Big Six team seven times in a single Premier League season since 2008; three of those were for Liverpool, and all five instances have been since 2016; yet there are over 20 referees each season.)

After Steven Gerrard lambasted Atkinson in his autobiography in 2015, up to which point Atkinson had a logical record and frequency of decisions for and against the Reds, Atkinson only ever gave Liverpool one big decision in the next seven years, in almost 30 games, before retiring in 2022; and zero at Anfield in his final seven years as a ref, including not giving some clear penalties in the season Liverpool missed out on the title by a single point (such as ignoring Naby Keïta being booted up in the air against Leicester).

Was he sent to Anfield because he was a curmudgeon who didn’t want to make decisions? Again, this may all be coincidental, but there were clear penalties at Anfield that he ignored.

Prior to the recent two fixtures, Tierney had never given Liverpool a penalty, in over 20 games. Yet since the scare of his assistant elbowing Andy Robertson, he gave two, albeit both stonewallers.

(And the only red card he gave in the Reds’ favour he gave as a yellow, before a VAR overturn as it was clearly a red.)

When looked at like this, and the way Anthony Taylor essentially ruined the game against Brentford and gave a record-breaking, radically outlying 19 free-kicks punishing a Liverpool side who were not the more physical (Brentford clearly were), it makes it harder to see the PGMOL appointments for Anfield fixtures as fair and balanced.

(EDIT: one thing I found very odd in the Brentford game was how Taylor booked Virgil van Dijk after four minutes for a standard yellow-card offence, when most refs almost never book players early in games. The amount of times players get away with maybe two or three heavy fouls before being booked is again indicative of inconsistency, and maybe speaks to the war-like mindset of Taylor going into this game. I’m all for early bookings, yet most refs in most games are not.)

As Andrew Beasley will show later in this piece, Taylor is super-harsh on time-wasting; Tierney is the master of bookings for dissent.

These two refs are outliers.

They are sent to Anfield a lot.

If the PGMOL is saying that only a few of their members are sufficiently skilled to do the job of refereeing at Anfield, that’s a damning indictment of the PGMOL.

Tierney Hates Klopp?

In his career, Paul Tierney has still given more Big Decisions (penalties, red cards and 2nd-yellows) against Liverpool than for the Reds, albeit one of those was pre-Klopp.

Given their attacking domination over the period, a normal distribution, as most Big Six teams would get, is more Big Decisions for; not a negative balance, as is the case with Tierney overall, or a neutral one.

The weirdly self-contorting ex-ref Peter Walton even said on BT Sport that the better sides should win more penalties, as they attack more.

(Reds and 2nd-yellows are perhaps less related to dominance, but teams under pressure, or with poorer players, seeing little of the ball, may make more fouls and more bad tackles out of frustration or desperation, and more illegal last-man/goal-line interventions. However, most Big Decisions are penalties anyway, not sendings-off.)

However, add the VAR calls that Tierney has made, and it's three objective ones in the Reds' favour, that he had to give as the lines showed the truth:

• Timo Werner goal disallowed for offside;

• Mohamed Salah goal awarded after incorrect offside;

• Raheem Sterling goal disallowed for offside.

And the subjective ones? Three, all against the Reds.

Even more interestingly, these were all against Manchester clubs, and very dubious to say the least:

• Manchester United, Virgil van Dijk, Goal Disallowed (Foul); Roberto Firmino goal disallowed for foul on David De Gea by Virgil van Dijk;

• Manchester City, Joe Gomez, Penalty Awarded (Handball);

• Manchester United, Eric Bailly, Penalty Cancelled (Foul); Penalty cancelled for challenge on Nathaniel Phillips by Eric Bailly.

The Gomez handball was harsh, but you can see why it was given – the ball came a long way and hit his hand, as he tried to pull it out of the way; but the other two decisions were fairly scandalous.

De Gea simply dropped the ball next to van Dijk, and Bailly absolutely ploughed through Phillips after getting a microscopic nick on the ball that is irrelevant to whether or not the player was reckless and out of control, and follows through to poleaxe an opponent.

(As an aside, Tierney, as the ref, also once blew for half-time six seconds early as Sadio Mané bore down on Man United’s goal, which even other refs described as weird and highly irregular. He also gave the worst officiating display I’ve ever seen, at Spurs last season, when he – and his Greater Manchester assistant, Chris Kavanagh as the VAR –basically stole two points from the Reds, to keep Liverpool a couple of points shy of Man City – a team that Tierney is statistically generous to when he does their games: four Big Decisions for, just one against, in 20 games. EDIT: For the record, Kavanagh otherwise seems by far the least controversial of the Mancunian refs, and the only one whose data for Liverpool and the Manchester clubs seems reasonable, albeit from the smaller sample sizes of nine, six and six games respectively. However, he had an absolute shocker as the VAR at Spurs, and perhaps Tierney, as the senior ref, did not want to be overruled or even asked to view the monitor on three major decisions that he got wrong.)

Those are Tierney’s subjective VAR calls in Liverpool games, and all three favoured Manchester. This isn’t to suggest he’s corrupt, just an observation. (More on Manchester later.)

The full list of issues with Tierney and Liverpool FC, which is so long that it seems even more incredible that he was appointed back to Anfield straight after his official elbowed a Liverpool player, can be seen here on This Is Anfield.

Some refs are kept away from situations where they’ve messed up badly, but Tierney was sent in time and time again. If these are honest mistakes, as they may be, then it’s a lot of honest mistakes; too many mistakes, regardless.

3x-4x As Many Refs Don't Like Giving Liverpool Penalties Compared to Rivals

I dug out my old spreadsheet for refs and Big Decisions, and whittled it down to see what patterns arose.

Because I’d updated some of the referees’ data recently (only a couple of refs, mostly for Liverpool games), it made sense to look at games-per-penalty awarded in favour of each team, rather than overall quantities.

(Most of the data is from 2015-2021, but a few refs have more recent games added.)

The average from this dataset is for a referee to give a penalty to one of the teams covered every 6.5 games.

This encompasses 1,369 games, in which 256 penalties were awarded to the qualifying teams: Big Six clubs (minus Arsenal*, but including Leicester) with a minimum of five games reffed.

(* In 2021 I chose the regular top four contenders, plus Leicester as a semi-control, as they'd also won the league in that time, and seemed to win a lot of penalties).

Of the most frequent penalty-to-specific-team refs, only two of the top 23 were for Liverpool, with Michael Oliver in 7th place overall, at a Liverpool penalty every 2.69 games.

However, four of the top 23 combinations were for Man City, and five were for Man United, including top spot, with Stuart Attwell awarding United five penalties in just eight games, at a rate of 1.60 games per penalty.

Leicester have six referees who hand them a penalty very frequently indeed.

So, Oliver and Graham Scott aside (albeit Scott only did six games), there aren't many who are eager to give the Reds a spot-kick.

(Reasonable rates of penalties to the Reds: Bobby Madley, Kevin Friend, Anthony Taylor and Andre Marriner, albeit Taylor has given almost as many against the Reds.)

However, at the bottom end, things get even more interesting.

Or depressing, rather.

Of the 23 refs who never gave a team a penalty or gave one at a measly rate of one every 12-25 games (i.e. all the rest), a staggering nine (39%) were refs doing Liverpool games.

Only four of the nine awarded the Reds a penalty, which totalled five penalties in 114 games; the same refs awarded a whopping TWELVE penalties against the Reds.

(As it was interesting to look, they also sent off four Liverpool players for a straight red, to one in the Reds' favour.)

For all the other clubs, it was a maximum of three super-unrewarding refs; for Liverpool it was nine.

In other words, in the 114 Liverpool games done by Neil Swarbrick, Mark Clattenburg, Lee Mason, Andy Madley, Roger East, Mike Dean, Paul Tierney, Jonathan Moss and Martin Atkinson, they gave 16 Big Decisions against the Reds and just six for. Even relegation sides wouldn’t be treated that harshly.

This was mostly during the period when Liverpool were the 2nd most dominant team in the land, or at worst, 3rd-5th.

Weirdly, 114 games is also exactly three full seasons. So it’s a huge chunk of Klopp’s tenure with those nine refs.

Mike Dean, bless him, waited until his 12th and final league game to give the Reds a penalty; having given two against them by that point.

Paul Tierney's two recent penalties still make his reffing of Liverpool a statistical outlier (one every 12.5 games), whilst giving Chelsea and Man United penalties four times as frequently, and Man City twice as frequently.

Remember, this is not me cherry-picking the results.

I simply looked at the worst games-per-penalty-to-team ref/team combinations, and the table glowed red, as of the 23, nine were for Liverpool.

In the table below, the footer row is for Liverpool data only.

This comes back to my overall theme, of refs who don't ‘like’ Liverpool and/or Klopp, getting given Liverpool games.

With those nine refs, Liverpool got a penalty on average every 23 games, and conceded one every 9.5 games! And it was 114 games per straight red card in Liverpool's favour (1 in 114); but every 28.5 games with a Red shown a straight red.

(I don't have the 2nd-yellow data to hand for these refs, but as noted below in this piece that uses Andrew Beasley’s data, there's only been one second yellow card in the Reds' favour since 2016.)

Two of these refs just happen to have been chosen to do Liverpool an outlying seven times in a season, and 50 times in total.

It would seem to partly explain where the Reds’ missing penalties went.

The most any ref went without giving a team a penalty were Lee Mason for Chelsea (10 games) and Neil Swarbrick for Liverpool (10 games). Both gave one penalty against that team in their respective 10 games.

Number of games done by clubs’ least-generous refs since 2015:

• Liverpool 114

• Chelsea 42

• Spurs 38

• Man United 36

• Leicester 36

• Man City 13

As such, it seems that Liverpool had between 72-101 games with referees who statistically “don't like them” compared to the aforementioned rivals, with the gap of 101 just happening to be to Manchester City, who have had just 13 games with really unfavourable refs at the 12-games-for-a-penalty cut-off.

(Also, no other refs had a worse than a penalty-every-10-games ratio for City. And I’m not denying that City should have the most penalties – they should. Just not by the gap to Liverpool that there is, and not with teams like Leicester, Palace, Bournemouth, Man United and Brighton getting penalties far more frequently.)

Several of these refs have (thankfully) retired, but some new refs have yet to give the Reds a spot-kick.

(John Brooks chose not to, until the VAR, Tony Harrington, told him to take another look at a clear handball near the goal-line denying a Diogo Jota shot. So that will go down as a penalty to Liverpool by Brooks, but it’s weird once VAR intervenes as to how to treat the data.)

The above data is for all the refs who had done at least five games for each team as of 2021, but at some point I'll add the new qualifying refs, and also add Arsenal, as well as updating all the data.

(But it can wait until next season, as like you, I'm all reffed out.)

Games-Per-Penalty

A look at games-per-penalty for each team and the refs’ rates.

Adding the refs who never gave a specific team a penalty, the database covers 1,466 games for the Big Six (minus Arsenal, plus Leicester).

(EDIT: I realised Mike Dean's Chelsea data was missing, so I've since added it. It's neutral: same decisions for as against – two penalties and one red card either way – in 16 games.)

The clubs in the database won 256 penalties and conceded 139, so they won 84.2% more penalties than conceded: close to a 2:1 ratio in their favour.

On straight red cards, it was 34 vs 48, so a 42.2% advantage to the bigger clubs (and Leicester).

There are just six refs who did Liverpool who gave penalties above the global 6.85 games-per-penalty average, yet 12 below; twice as many refs who were less likely to give the Reds a penalty compared to the global results of the database.

In total, the six 'positive' refs account for 116 games, and the 12 below-average to super-stingy refs did 160 games.

Both Manchester clubs have the exact opposite pattern: 100-or-so games from below-average to super-stingy refs, over 150 from more-generous-than-normal refs.

Chelsea's split is virtually 50-50: 122 games generous, 126 not-so-generous, with Leicester's falling neatly between Chelsea and the Manchester clubs.

(Again, these refs' generosity in this context is when judged only relating to those specific clubs, as the same ref could be stingy to someone else; such as Mike Dean, who gave City penalties every 3.57 games, with seven in 25, and gave Man United penalties above the average rate; but only gave the Reds one in 12 games, as noted.)

Spurs are the only club who share Liverpool's plight in having a greater number of refs who gave them little than who gave them lots; albeit from 149 games to Liverpool's 160.

The worst rate for any referee/City combination is a penalty every 10 games (two in 20 games from Atkinson); plus no penalties in the 13 games done by Chris Kavanagh and Mark Clattenburg – the only two who gave them blank-all, and it was from roughly half a dozen games each. As such, almost no referees seem overly harsh on City.

Liverpool had 79 games done by a ref who awarded them a penalty at a very stingy rate of one every 12-25 games (2-4x the average), and never got a single penalty in the 35 games (three shy of a full season) done by Neil Swarbrick, Mark Clattenburg, Lee Mason, Andy Madley and Roger East.

Again, this is from the start of 2015/16, up to 2021 but also including some referees’ data up to 2023.

That said, Clattenburg did once give Liverpool three penalties at Old Trafford in one game in 2013/14; but he never gave Liverpool another big decision in his final 12 matches involving the club, whilst giving two against the Reds (perhaps someone had a word with him).

It’s also worth remembering that when Liverpool have British and managers and more attacking British players, they win a lot more penalties per season.

Even allowing for runs of games where they will be no clear penalty or red-card offence, the numbers are such that it really seems to make a difference to who is appointed for Liverpool's games, and that the balance of 'bad' appointments is 50% greater than the 'good' ones; the opposite to the Manchester clubs.

Manchester, So Much To Answer For

I've never really bought into the theory about Mancunian refs being bad for Liverpool, but I've never crunched the data that hard, beyond a couple of individuals.

The database (Klopp era) has four Mancunian referees who did a total of 288 games not involving Liverpool (but involving one or both of Man United, Man City, Chelsea, Spurs and Leicester), and 63 involving the Reds.

The four Mancunians:

• Anthony Taylor, Wythenshawe, Manchester

• Paul Tierney, Wigan, Greater Manchester

• Chris Kavanagh, Ashton-under-Lyne, Greater Manchester

• Lee Mason, Bolton, Greater Manchester

Then there's Merseyside's Mike Dean, who did 126 games, 12 involving the Reds, 114 for the others.

As noted elsewhere in the piece, the club Dean was least generous to was … Liverpool.

So, what about the Mancunian refs?

They still do Manchester clubs, while the current three Merseyside refs do not do Liverpool, and as noted, Mike Dean only did after Covid.

Doing 288 games, plus 63 more involving Liverpool, seems a fairly hefty sample size.

Now, this does not take into account the difficulty of the fixtures; such as Anthony Taylor doing Liverpool vs Man City, albeit any time the ref does Liverpool and a Manchester club, it appears on the results for each.

Turns out that refs from Manchester give Manchester teams penalties at a greater frequency than any of the other sets of referees/teams covered.

And rather than it be City, it's United who they are most generous to.

The same refs are least generous to ... Liverpool!

(I read a lot of the better true crime books and watch the non-tacky documentaries, and I love how often jurors insist they won't be biased, and then are extremely biased. Sometimes it's simply the weight of their priors and the cognitive distortions that are hard to overcome.)

I genuinely wasn't expecting to see such a stark contrast, as I assumed there would be something closer the refs from United doing what Mike Dean did with Liverpool, and basically just try too hard to not do their version of 'the referee's a Scouser'.

Mancunian refs give Man City and Man United a penalty every 5.69 games, 17% above average frequency for the big clubs (and Leicester).

They give Liverpool a penalty every 8.63 games, 25.8% below average frequency.

But there's more. And again, we have an insane outlier.

If you look at penalties plus straight red cards, for and against, then when Liverpool have Mancunian refs their balance is zero. (With Dean, it's minus one!)

So, in every 63 games when the ref is from Greater Manchester, Liverpool will get an 'Extra Big Decision' ... never.

(Add the 12 games done by Mike Dean and it's in minus territory across the 75 games; meaning one More Negative Big Decision per 75 games.)

This compares to an Extra Big Decision every 11.3, 12, 13 and 13 games for the other categories.

The 11.3 is the all-clubs average from the 1,482 games in the database, so including Leicester, Spurs and Chelsea, as well as the Manchester clubs and Liverpool.

(Again, this doesn't include beneficial 2nd-yellows, but the Reds have had only one of those since Klopp arrived, and that was in 2016.)

From all the non-Mancunian refs, Liverpool get an Extra Big Decision every 13 games, in keeping with the general pattern – a bit less frequent than the Mancunian refs give the Manchester teams, at one every 12 games, and still the worst frequency overall.

But from Mancunian refs, Liverpool are penalised as much as they are rewarded: nine Big Decisions for, nine Big Decisions against.

Anthony Taylor and Paul Tierney have both given Man United penalties at twice the usual rate, and Taylor is running at 2.5x as many Big Decisions for United than against (24 games), while Tierney is at 5x (five penalties for, one against, 18 games).

Taylor at least gives Big Decisions against City (three red cards and three penalties against them in 18 games); Tierney (20 games) does not, with a 4:1 ratio in their favour.

Once the sample sizes get smaller, to below 20 games, it's harder to draw firm conclusions due to the vagaries of what happens in each 90 minutes; but the Manchester refs, on the whole (bar a couple of anomalies), are very generous to the Manchester teams across 119 games, and not at all generous to Liverpool, in 63.

I don't know what all this means, other than – for whatever reason – Mancunian refs should perhaps stop doing games that involve Manchester teams, and maybe stop doing Liverpool games, too.

(EDIT: The Mancunian averages against Liverpool and in favour of Manchester clubs would be even stronger if it were not for Chris Kavanagh, as noted earlier, albeit he had done just 21 games involving these clubs, nine for Liverpool and six each for Manchester, as of the point my data stops at. He’s one of the refs I’ve yet to update his data since 2021.)

Of course, this won't happen as there are too many Mancunian refs, and three of the alternatives have Merseyside connections*, so that would only further confuse matters (I’m not asking for Merseyside refs to do Liverpool games – just a change in the way Mancunian refs all do Manchester clubs and Merseyside refs almost never do Liverpool.)

(*Robert Jones, Peter Bankes and Australian Jarred Gillet, whose wife’s grandfather supported Liverpool.)

I'm not alleging corruption or even overt favouritism, but the pressures, subconscious biases, and various other factors, suggest that there are huge differences in the way these referees treat teams from Manchester and Liverpool FC.

Home Discomfort

Apart from Spurs, since 2015 all of the Big Six clubs (plus Newcastle) win over 60% of their penalties at home. Everton do, too.

For Liverpool, it’s just 55.8%, which is below average.

Now, bear in mind that Liverpool’s home form has been sensational over this period; and that the overall number, 24, is also low.

(Last season the Reds had the top attacking xG at home; this year the Reds rank 2nd, despite being 5th in the league and not having a great season. In other seasons, the Reds have had the best home record for xG and/or points, even when not winning the league.)

A lower number of home penalties, and a lower percentage of the team’s penalties coming at home, suggests an issue somewhere that isn’t with how the Reds play football.

Especially when considering that both Manchester clubs win the greatest number of home penalties, even though Manchester United have been nowhere near as good as Liverpool between 2015-2023 overall, and definitely not as good or consistently attacking at home – at least three of their managers have produced dull, counter-attacking football.

Further south, Brighton already have as many home penalties as Liverpool (24), despite two fewer seasons in the top flight since 2015. Brighton have been great this year, but before that? They were hardly an attacking side; often sterile, possession-based football with little cutting edge.

A few other teams get fewer penalties at home than Liverpool, but along with City, Liverpool have been the best home team by far since 2015, when Jürgen Klopp arrived.

Liverpool are therefore not a distant outlier here; but they would be when compared to what you’d expect to see.

Penalties vs Attacking Play (Goals)

As mentioned earlier, yet another example where the Reds are the entire league outliers: the fewest penalties won in relation to the number of goals scored.

Liverpool rank 24th out of the 24 qualifying Premier League teams, 2015-2023 (this data was from a couple of months ago, and Liverpool have won a small number of penalties since, but several other clubs have won even more. It won’t change the outcome).

The mid-placing of the Reds’ red circle on the horizontal axis also shows the Reds’ middling number of penalties won in that time.

The lower, and more to the right, the ‘better’ or ‘luckier’ teams are in terms of winning spot kicks.

In the past, similar kinds of patterns have been clear via attacking xG, and also touches in the opposition box.

And below, the full data:

Salah Outlier

The full article from last year is here, but this was the best of several similar plots.

This is what I mean about outlier stats needing investigation. Arguably the best attacking player in the league at the time should not be treated so shabbily by referees.

Indeed, Klopp’s two biggest frustrations this season have not been for major calls but for Mo Salah being fouled right in front of his eyes on the touchline, where the officials could clearly see, and nothing being given. Klopp knows it’s no accident; that Salah is treated like some kind of villain, despite being honest and mild-mannered (and only ever booked once for diving).

Basically, everyone and then … …. … … …. … Mo Salah.

While this is just about fouls in general, I’ve previously shown that, across several seasons and 600 penalties, English players were favoured in both boxes, in relation to minutes played. Foreign players won fewer penalties pro rata, and conceded more penalties too, above the proportion of minutes they played.

While not referencing the same thing, an Opta piece showed which players have won the most penalties in the Premier League era. Elite foreign strikers who spent a decade or more here? Nah, fuck off, dopey! English or played for England? Of course!

Does the PGMOL think about things like this? Do they look at the data and wonder why English players are treated more favourably, or do they not even consider data, and just say “well done, lads!” when they review their performances?

Sadio Mané the Last Player Sent off Against Liverpool…

… for two yellow cards.

I mean, this is also some serious outlier shit.

Andrew Beasley calculated that in keeping with the number of yellow cards given against Liverpool’s opponents, there should have been at least six second yellows since 2015. Yet there’s been one, and that was Mané for Southampton.

Every other team that has spent all eight seasons in the top flight has had at least five second-yellows in their favour.

Or, at least five times as many.

The above graph should not be possible, if all was operating as it should. These outlier graphs are too plentiful, too clear to write off.

I mean, it’s not like you have to think back further than Man City away, when Rodri should have got a second yellow in a game Liverpool were doing well in, before City got the upper hand. The five missing second-yellows are there, in the actual games.

It also shows, as with penalties, that the smaller clubs often get a lot more Big Decisions that their fans think; certainly more than Liverpool.

The biggest penalty winners outside of the Manchester due tend to be Leicester, Crystal Palace and other often mid-table teams. Not only do Palace win a lot of penalties, they also see a lot of players sent off for second-yellows (and these cannot therefore be straight-reds connected to the penalties). Nine 2nd-yellows favouring Bournemouth in just six seasons looks very odd compared to just one for Liverpool in eight seasons. Maybe teams don’t try and tackle and foul Liverpool players? - just stand back and let them waltz through?

I often wonder if officials find it easier to make big calls in mid-table games, as mid-table teams rank freakishly high on various Big Decisions. But as with penalties, Liverpool should at least be in amongst City, United, Arsenal and Chelsea in this distribution, given the massive dataset should even out any kinks.

Game Vandalism

Officially, Liverpool are the least time-wasting team in the Premier League. Yet the Reds are treated differently to the worst time-wasting teams.

Edit: I’ve added this little section below.

One thing to add is how early and coordinated a lot of the time-wasting has become. This is the key point: game vandalism. It can happen at 0-0 but also 1-0 down when teams want to keep the score as tight as possible (as seen with Brentford last week).

Newcastle’s Nick Pope faking a headache within a minute of the kickoff at Anfield was so obvious as a rouse to kill the atmosphere, and was the first action in a clear ploy of constantly disrupting the game. Arsenal rotated faked head injuries, and defenders and keepers going down holding their head in the box to stop the game is a clear exploitation of genuine concern about concussion, yet almost never is there an actual serious injury (when there is, you know, albeit refs feel pressured to stop the game regardless).

Late-game time-wasting, to run down the clock, has always been part of football. We accept that. The problem now is that it starts 30 seconds into a game, and is often not clamped down upon until some token booking after 87 minutes, and often it’s the wrong player booked. See the articles on how less and less actual game time is being seen in the Premier League.

The issue is not that all teams time-waste, as that’s clear whataboutism.

It’s the extent, the earliness, the overt cynicism, that needs cracking down on, and refs too often get it wrong by being far too weak.

They are short-changing fans who pay a lot of money (at games and on TV) expecting to see a full game, and a fair contest. Not less than half a game.

Then the refs rarely add on the correct time anyway.

It can distort things like goal difference, by providing almost no additional time in one-sided games – such as when Liverpool led Man United 7-0, and almost no time was added, despite the six second-half goals, and ten subs, and several bookings, plus other stoppages, which means that if goal difference comes into play in the final week, the Reds may have been ‘cheated’, assuming that they were more likely to add an eighth goal than United get one back.

Time-Wasting (section by Andrew Beasley)

Time-wasting, it appears, is an art. One which receives punishment on an ad-hoc and inconsistent basis. This was abundantly evident during Liverpool’s 1-0 win over Brentford on Saturday.

According to Opta’s Michael Reid,

“the ball was in-play for 43 minutes and 10 seconds… 44% of the total match time. That's both the lowest total and % in-play time of any #LFC Premier League game on record (from 2006-07).”

Prior to this match, the Reds had received one caution for time-wasting in the 2022/23 Premier League (and more on that shortly) yet both Ibrahima Konaté and Alisson Becker were shown yellow cards for this offence by referee Anthony Taylor last weekend. The laws of the game state a player must be cautioned for ‘delaying the restart of play’ though no time frame is specified for a pause to be punishable.

Let’s dig a little deeper. While the title ‘time wasting’ suggests taking an age over a throw-in or goal kick, it also applies to kicking the ball away. This was the offence which Konaté was deemed to have made (and you can watch footage of it here).

It’s hard to take an unbiased view, but he cleared the ball with an opponent nearby within milliseconds of the whistle going for a foul. The play had not been stopped for a while before the Frenchman kicked the ball away, which makes it feel a harsh punishment. (PT: go back a couple of games and Bukayo Saka, with Arsenal leading, kicked the ball a long distance several seconds after Paul Tierney’s whistle had gone. No booking. Saka then openly defied Tierney by shrugging his shoulders when walking slowly to take a corner, and finally Tierney booked him. Again, consistency.)

Anyway, Alisson was booked for more conventional time wasting, by taking too long on a goal kick (clip here).

The ball went out of play with 76:17 on the clock. Eighteen seconds later, Alisson placed the ball down and Taylor blew his whistle, signalling play could resume. Just 10 seconds after that, the yellow card came out.

There was a fascinating article on Opta Analyst recently regarding time wasting. It noted that the average goal kick takes 30 seconds out of the game, and that Aaron Ramsdale took 57 for each of his when Arsenal drew 2-2 at Anfield (as part of a synchronised time-wasting mission) while Vicente Guaita averaged over a minute when Crystal Palace faced Newcastle. Yet Alisson Becker was booked just 28 seconds after the ball went behind his goal line.

(Interestingly, the Opta piece was updated on Tuesday following the issues regarding time-wasting in both this match and Newcastle’s 2-0 defeat to Arsenal. Among several points of interest, the additional information notes that Alisson has taken longer on average for his goal kicks in five other matches this season - without being booked - while Brentford “spent longer on average per delay (37.0s vs. 32.1s)”).

In the 21st minute of the game, Brentford goalkeeper David Raya took 38 seconds to take a goal kick following a missed shot by Virgil van Dijk. Eight minutes later, 34 seconds elapsed between Darwin Núñez missing his clear-cut chance and Raya restarting play. These were not excessively lengthy stoppages based on league average but neither was the one for which Alisson was penalised.

Liverpool’s only other booking for time wasting this season occurred when Joe Gomez took his time over a throw-in at Arsenal (clip). In fairness to Michael Oliver, referee on that occasion, the Reds’ defender did hold onto the ball for what felt like a very long time, though it was only approximately 16 seconds (which is spot on league average).

Let’s review Liverpool’s last match, in which there were 33 throw-ins, for comparison. The average time between the preceding logged match action and the throw being taken was 18.1 seconds. However, the Reds took 16.4 for their 19, while Brentford spent an average of 20.1 for each of their 14 throws.

It is fair to acknowledge that although the visitors recorded the three longest stoppages for restarting from throw-ins, the top 10 were evenly split.

The obvious elephant in the room here is the inconsistency from officials.

As Allison was booked in the same game for a 28– (though you could argue 10–) second delay, why weren’t some of these players? Why did Gomez get a yellow at the Emirates for taking less than half as long as some throws took last weekend?

Oliver punishes time-wasting in line with the average rate of his peers, while Taylor is way out in front. In that light, it perhaps shouldn’t be a surprise that somebody was booked at Anfield on Saturday. Was Liverpool’s number one just the fall guy in this particular match though?

(PT: Again, though – look at the massive disparities in style here, and you see similar disparities in the awarding of Big Decisions. Some refs give penalties at three times the rates of other refs. That can’t be ‘right’ – that it just happens to be that over big sample sizes, some refs ‘see’ tons of penalties in their games, and other refs ‘see’ very few.)

We can only speculate, we’ll never know.

To finish my interlude on a lighter note, the above table shows that Paul Tierney has given the most bookings for dissent this season. Does he treat players more harshly than other referees, or does he simply give them more to complain about with contestable decision making? That’s the one question in this section that we can confidently answer.

Not LiVARpool

On subjective decisions, so excluding offsides, Liverpool are fairly middling for VAR overturns. (Data is via Andrew once more.)

Here, there is no clear bias for, or against, the Reds.

Indeed, it’s hard to say if having more VAR overturns means the ref has made more mistakes, or the VAR has been more proactive.

Either way, the LiVARpool stuff is utter bollocks.

What the VAR cannot do is award second yellow cards, so that’s where Liverpool get shafted, it seems.

Explanations?

No, this is not a conspiracy theory, although I got out the Bacofoil ready to make a smart hat.

I don’t really believe in many big, multi-person or multi-organisational conspiracy theories (most of the time), but obviously people do conspire.

Yet a lot of the time it’s just incompetence, or agendas that need not even be overtly discussed.

There’s also the conspiracy of the implied: in this case, getting together and moaning about a manager and nobody actually saying anything explicit, but the meaning gathered, like mean girls undermining a classmate. Perhaps no one says they’ll shun her, or treat her badly, but the inference is clear, to give her a swerve. That’s how groupthink works.

“Jeez, that Klopp”.

“What’s his problem?”

“I hate that guy!”

Phrases like that could be said, and seed a siege mentality, a unity of the beleaguered ref, yet it never need rise to the level of “we need to go and destroy Liverpool”.

Beyond that, they can have grudges, biases, misgivings, misapprehensions, and a general lack of awareness about data and how they might be behaving unfairly. The pressure to not look like a ‘homer’ at Anfield must be massive.

People can write off a series of incidents as each being ‘just one of those things’.

Rather than go conspiratorial, here are some logical explanations for the data that follows:

• Myth of Kop; the worry that the Kop influences referees, so officials go into games in ‘war mode’ – ready to react instinctively with an elbow, for instance.

• Myth of too many penalties to Liverpool, and LiVARpool; (at points in the distant past, Liverpool did win a lot of penalties.) Optics are such that, if Liverpool get a big decision, there’s a social media outcry. The pressure on refs used to be in the stadium; now it’s online, and beyond. Again, “the referee’s a Scouser” comes out very quickly at Anfield if Liverpool get a free-kick.

• The pressure on particular refs living in Greater Manchester, from people around them, even if they have no obvious allegiances.

• Klopp antagonism; he shouts at refs and 4th officials, which I appreciate they don’t like; albeit he’s not someone who goes overboard before and after games about specific refs, or uses the most inflammatory language in press conferences. (And you can’t justify being harsh against Liverpool because you don’t like Klopp, as that affects the rivals of whoever the Reds are playing, as well as being against what officials should be doing, which is reffing the bloody game fairly, and putting pettiness – or worse – aside).

• Liverpool as a “republic”, separate from the rest of England; and refs who grew up thinking Liverpool fans were responsible for Hillsborough. A general dislike and distrust of Scousers (as well as perhaps Germans and other foreigners).

• Plus, perhaps a hint of some people within the refereeing fraternity who don’t especially like Liverpool FC, even if they’re not actively setting out to cheat them out of decisions.

Neil Atkinson of The Anfield Wrap recently said:

“There are so many decisions we haven’t got for so long, especially around Mo Salah, that it is hard to believe in good faith. This is deepened when so many referees we get at Anfield do their big shop in the Greater Manchester area.

“I am concerned about people feeling all this ends up seeming “tinfoil hat”. But Liverpool, literally the manager and the coaching staff and the players wouldn’t be human if they themselves didn’t wonder. Footballers and football clubs – see Fulham recently at Old Trafford – talk about referees in Sunday league terms. “This fella hates us”. My wider point is that I don’t think Liverpool believe in the referees and, to be honest, I simply don’t blame them.

“Because you have to do your big shop somewhere. Because you grow up with bias. Because you have something to prove. Because the man who is now in charge of PGMOL rose to the rank of Sergeant in South Yorkshire Police in the 90s and I watched him referee The Scousers.”

The data we’ve shared in this piece suggests that it’s not tinfoil hat stuff, but something is genuinely going wrong with the way Liverpool are officiated. It definitely predates Howard Webb’s rise to the top of the PGMOL, too; but things seem to have got worse this season.

Klopp has been aware of this for a long time, especially the Salah stuff (and the Tierney issues), and as such, that tips him over the edge, as he seems someone wrestle Salah to the ground in front of him on the touchline and it’s ‘play on’; as if he’s being gaslit. Especially as his team are usually Fair Play champions.

I personally don’t want any favouritism from the PGMOL; helping hands destroy sport.

I just want more clear integrity; a fairer distribution of referees, and for those referees to not arrive with such myths and preconceptions and prejudicial ideas about what usually happens to favour Liverpool at Anfield, as looks clear in their data.

Plus, better referees in general, who apply the laws with at least some vague consistency.

No two people will see the same incident the exact same way, but the immense difference in how referees handle games and situations (huge disparities in bookings, sendings-off and the number of penalties they tend to award across the pool) means you can be regularly getting the short straw if you get the same narrow band of flawed officials.

Our American subscribers find the officiating in England awful, and often offer comparisons to how it’s done in sports over there. The same might be heard from our Dutch or Norwegian subscribers, whose commentators are often aghast at the decision-making.

When Mo Salah is grabbed from in front, then grabbed from behind, then runs 20 yards with the same player on his back biting his ear, I don’t expect to see a foul given against Salah for shrugging the player off. Y’know, basic stuff like that.

Time-wasting applied to visiting teams at Anfield for long delays, not to Liverpool players for short delays.

Penalties given at a normal rate across a massive sample size, where anomalies should generally even themselves out, not grow more prevalent.

And no refs from Manchester anymore, based on the stats revealed above. At the very least, Paul Tierney must never do another Liverpool game. It’s gone beyond ridiculous now.

Things never even themselves out; life doesn’t work that way. But there should be less obvious negative outlier data for a team as good as Liverpool have been during Jürgen Klopp’s reign.

The data should not be this weird.

Right, where’s the tinfoil?

Postscript: Paranoid Rivals

Managerial bias and paranoia plays into the narrative.

“You don’t get those here,” said Frank Lampard last season when serial diver Anthony Gordon went down in the box (which looked a penalty from some angles, a dive from others).

Yet Everton got a penalty at Anfield in not one but two recent seasons, both very soft. Liverpool haven’t had an Anfield penalty against Everton for years.

Everton (like various clubs) get far more penalties per game at Anfield than Liverpool do. Sometimes they get more Anfield penalties in a full season than Liverpool do (such as Spurs a few years back).

That Everton do get those is a simple fact: not a perception.

Marco Silva recently added to the insanity. Look at the lazy, tired leg from Virgil van Dijk on the opening day against his team, which Aleksandar Mitrović happily tumbled over. But then look at the wild swing by Issa Diop on Darwin Núñez. Both were penalties. Both saw a striker go over a leg swung or hung in their path, after missing the ball. Penalty.

Yet Silva said the one on Núñez was “clearly not a penalty”.

“When you lose a game in football to that penalty, [it] is embarrassing,” Silva told BBC Sport. “When you have the referee, then the VAR [video assistant referee] to help the referee, it is embarrassing.”

That is utterly insane. It doesn't help.

Pep Guardiola says Man City get nothing at Anfield. But have had Anfield penalties, and had lots of Big Decisions in City’s favour when the Reds have visited his team’s home. Steve Bruce, Sam Allardyce and various older managers say the same about Anfield, and now the younger foreign ones follow suit. So many managers say that you get nothing at Anfield. As such, refs seem less keen to give Liverpool Big Decisions.

Along with #LiVARpool and the older #Penaltypool, these things can see referees playing the stadium and the myths, not the reality of what just occurred.

As such, look at some data, and any weird patterns, ask why they’re occurring.

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