What a fantastic write up Pedro! Its well and good to complain but rarely do you find well put together solutions like this. I mean, it's not exactly otherworldly as this same framework exists in other sports, industries, or countries. That said, it takes some work to really think about it and retrofit the solutions to the EPL and English football
You have every right to be Cliff.I usually fill in the **** with the word ‘ Snake’ when it comes to Neville.Particularly ANYTHING that comes out of his mouth that’s Arsenal related.Listen to him on sky when an Arsenal player is involved in vital decision. I quote “oooohhh.He’s a lucky boy”-Neville speak means It’s a foul send him off.Snake.
Now this a monster of a great post. Pedro always comes with the goods, sometimes before anyone notices! And his analysis and predictions are usually devoid of emotions, and nuanced. Plus I just love a flowery prose. I shared it with my circle. Thank you
I’ve said since the beginning of time that all these (excellent) proposals will only be implemented when football clubs demand for them.
PL clubs are billion dollar organizations. Every week they let their football manager trot out into front of the cameras for 5 mins after being ruined by ref decisions to air their frustration, then continue on as if nothing happened.
The day premier league clubs begin *as organisations* to demand better, the change will come and it will come thick and fast.
If a bank feels it’s being treated unfair by a regulator, do you think they get a middle manager with no genuine power (which is what football managers are) to come and complain to the regulator for 5 mins then fuck off and take their unfair treatment? NO. they will have the CFO and Legal all over it like a bad rash, threatening law suits and the like.
I don’t ask clubs to bring in legal after every slightly dubious decision, but in absolutely nailed on cases of blatantly wrong decisions ruining matches, this is exactly what they should be doing.
And the day it happens, the house of cards comes tumbling down because PGMOL doesn’t have a leg to stand on. Then clubs will come together to demand a sensible model akin to what Pedro outlined - it makes perfect sense.
But let’s be clear. Until the actual teams stop acting like cucks crying into their cokes after catching PGMOL refs in bed with their wives, the problems are going absolutely nowhere
Really great post about the PGMOL and how to fix VAR. Realy enjoyable. For me, this is the way to go to optimize referring performances. I have never believed the referees were corrupt nor didn't want Arsenal to win. It's always been the make up of the game (head over rules, inconsistencies), the tools they have to work with and general structural issues.
Their lack of accountability that you mention almost reminds of that of Arsenal and how you swat it away on here when people demand better from the management. What do you call it again? You'd rather "enjoy the season" than demand accountable of a failing project.
UK stats site - "The median annual earnings for full-time employees in the United Kingdom was approximately 34,963 British pounds in 2023 ..."
Greedy, corrupt people don't stop being that way just because you raised their salary. Referees, at £200,000 per annum, are already paid a lot more than average worker in the UK and they have no reason to be corrupt but they are because they are weirdos who remember being the awkward 17 yr old ref.
Increasing these people's salaries even more is pointless because they still going to think they not paid enough when you have people like Pedro writing about how bent referees need more £££ for some unknown reason.
What do you think about what footballers earn? It's pretty basic now to earn 200k in a week. I agree that even 200k annually is much but their field is a special field. They also have shorter careers I reckon.
Ideally footballers should be getting wage caps. Earning up to 400k weekly is quite literally insane.
Referee shouldn't be thought of as a career, more of a hobby that you do on weekends.
I don't know what to do about players salaries because I have two beliefs - players should demand highest possible salary they can get but this attitude prices out the average person and that's bad for sport in general.
Wage cap is one solution, I would be happy if clubs were forced to sell x amount of tickets to people on minimum wage or earning a few $$$ more than minimum wage but not well off/comfortable.
Other than running around the field at the same time, in which way do players and refs have same job?
If referees were capable, they would very much rather be players than reffing, but they don't have ability to be players so they do this instead.
I aware that refereeing is unpleasant thankless job but that doesn't mean they are super talented people that deserve to be rewarded like they in the 1%.
Tbh PGMOL being corrupt is to be expected. What’s more concerning is the media being in bed with them
With sky it’s bad enough but I see why they do this, the PL is their star product and shitting on it when they pay so much for the privilege of owning the rights to it is painful for them. But why does the rest of the media tow the line? That’s even worse
All the sports media in the UK is dependent on having above board, squeaky clean premier league and that's how they going to talk about it.
It ok to have random people believing epl is bent, it gets people talking, but if it was confirmed the whole system is corrupt than there's going to be big problems and media doesn't want to harm the golden goose that is the epl.
A refereeing performance table should be easy to set up. Get an impartial refereeing panel to analyse the decisions made (and not made) in each game. Either consisting of foreign football nerds or ones who support lower league clubs for impartiality.
Get them to score refereeing performance along the lines of:
1 - Right or wrong decision (scale of -5-5, 5 being clearly right, -5 being obviously wrong, and a -1 being a poor decision, and a 3 being a decent decision, for instance).
2 - Level of impact on the game (scale 1-10, 1 being a minor decision like an indirect free kick in a team's own half, and a 10 being a penalty or a red card, so a bad big decision is weighted more heavily than a bunch of small correct decisions).
and 3 - Consistency across the teams played (allowing rotational fouling to be picked up - also scored 1-10)
Each REF gets a mean score from the panel for the match performance, which then adds up over the course of the season.
Each CLUB also gets a reffing consistency score, showing whether they are awarded more decisions or fewer decisions than expected.
The algorithm for the reffing performance score is pretty simple:
Inputs
Decision Quality (D): A score from -5 to +5:
-5: Obviously wrong decision
0: Marginal or unclear decision
+5: Clearly correct decision
Impact on Game (I): A score from 1 to 10 for the impact of the decision, where 1 is a minor decision and 10 is a major decision.
Consistency Across Teams (C): A single score from 1 to 10 representing how evenly the referee applied decisions to both teams.
Step 1: Weighted Decision Scoring
Each decision can be weighted based on its quality and impact:
Weighted Decision Score=D×I
This gives higher weight to decisions with both high impact and poor quality.
Step 2: Average Decision Score
To normalise across all decisions made in the game:
Average Decision Score=∑(Weighted Decision Score)/Total Number of Decisions
This score reflects the overall quality and impact of the referee's decision-making.
Step 3: Consistency Adjustment
Consistency is critical to fairness. Incorporate the consistency score (C) as a multiplier to reward or penalise the referee:
Consistency Adjustment=C/10
This scales the consistency score to a multiplier between 0.1 and 1.
Step 4: Final Refereeing Performance Score
Combine the weighted average score with the consistency adjustment to produce the final score:
Pedro, kudos and chapeau to you for this. It's baffling that someone like you has a 10x better vision of what reffing org should look like, than anyone within the institution(s) actually dealing directly with football. It really should be taken seriously and it is a way to go, hopefully a reboot happens as this is becoming hard to watch (has been for many years ofc).
What a fantastic write up Pedro! Its well and good to complain but rarely do you find well put together solutions like this. I mean, it's not exactly otherworldly as this same framework exists in other sports, industries, or countries. That said, it takes some work to really think about it and retrofit the solutions to the EPL and English football
You have every right to be Cliff.I usually fill in the **** with the word ‘ Snake’ when it comes to Neville.Particularly ANYTHING that comes out of his mouth that’s Arsenal related.Listen to him on sky when an Arsenal player is involved in vital decision. I quote “oooohhh.He’s a lucky boy”-Neville speak means It’s a foul send him off.Snake.
Now this a monster of a great post. Pedro always comes with the goods, sometimes before anyone notices! And his analysis and predictions are usually devoid of emotions, and nuanced. Plus I just love a flowery prose. I shared it with my circle. Thank you
I’ve said since the beginning of time that all these (excellent) proposals will only be implemented when football clubs demand for them.
PL clubs are billion dollar organizations. Every week they let their football manager trot out into front of the cameras for 5 mins after being ruined by ref decisions to air their frustration, then continue on as if nothing happened.
The day premier league clubs begin *as organisations* to demand better, the change will come and it will come thick and fast.
If a bank feels it’s being treated unfair by a regulator, do you think they get a middle manager with no genuine power (which is what football managers are) to come and complain to the regulator for 5 mins then fuck off and take their unfair treatment? NO. they will have the CFO and Legal all over it like a bad rash, threatening law suits and the like.
I don’t ask clubs to bring in legal after every slightly dubious decision, but in absolutely nailed on cases of blatantly wrong decisions ruining matches, this is exactly what they should be doing.
And the day it happens, the house of cards comes tumbling down because PGMOL doesn’t have a leg to stand on. Then clubs will come together to demand a sensible model akin to what Pedro outlined - it makes perfect sense.
But let’s be clear. Until the actual teams stop acting like cucks crying into their cokes after catching PGMOL refs in bed with their wives, the problems are going absolutely nowhere
As someone who lives in Crouch End, i am deeply offended to be mentioned in the same breath as Gary ***** Neville
Really great post about the PGMOL and how to fix VAR. Realy enjoyable. For me, this is the way to go to optimize referring performances. I have never believed the referees were corrupt nor didn't want Arsenal to win. It's always been the make up of the game (head over rules, inconsistencies), the tools they have to work with and general structural issues.
Their lack of accountability that you mention almost reminds of that of Arsenal and how you swat it away on here when people demand better from the management. What do you call it again? You'd rather "enjoy the season" than demand accountable of a failing project.
Upwards and onwards
After increasing the refs salary, lets also increase Toneys salary to stop him from betting.
Spot on, Sid.
UK stats site - "The median annual earnings for full-time employees in the United Kingdom was approximately 34,963 British pounds in 2023 ..."
Greedy, corrupt people don't stop being that way just because you raised their salary. Referees, at £200,000 per annum, are already paid a lot more than average worker in the UK and they have no reason to be corrupt but they are because they are weirdos who remember being the awkward 17 yr old ref.
Increasing these people's salaries even more is pointless because they still going to think they not paid enough when you have people like Pedro writing about how bent referees need more £££ for some unknown reason.
What do you think about what footballers earn? It's pretty basic now to earn 200k in a week. I agree that even 200k annually is much but their field is a special field. They also have shorter careers I reckon.
Ideally footballers should be getting wage caps. Earning up to 400k weekly is quite literally insane.
Referee shouldn't be thought of as a career, more of a hobby that you do on weekends.
I don't know what to do about players salaries because I have two beliefs - players should demand highest possible salary they can get but this attitude prices out the average person and that's bad for sport in general.
Wage cap is one solution, I would be happy if clubs were forced to sell x amount of tickets to people on minimum wage or earning a few $$$ more than minimum wage but not well off/comfortable.
Why do you have this very contrasting view about footballers and referees given that they basically both do the same jobs? Beats me
Other than running around the field at the same time, in which way do players and refs have same job?
If referees were capable, they would very much rather be players than reffing, but they don't have ability to be players so they do this instead.
I aware that refereeing is unpleasant thankless job but that doesn't mean they are super talented people that deserve to be rewarded like they in the 1%.
Tbh PGMOL being corrupt is to be expected. What’s more concerning is the media being in bed with them
With sky it’s bad enough but I see why they do this, the PL is their star product and shitting on it when they pay so much for the privilege of owning the rights to it is painful for them. But why does the rest of the media tow the line? That’s even worse
All the sports media in the UK is dependent on having above board, squeaky clean premier league and that's how they going to talk about it.
It ok to have random people believing epl is bent, it gets people talking, but if it was confirmed the whole system is corrupt than there's going to be big problems and media doesn't want to harm the golden goose that is the epl.
This should be pasted everywhere....great read.
9999999 words. All correct. Nice one Pedro 👍
A refereeing performance table should be easy to set up. Get an impartial refereeing panel to analyse the decisions made (and not made) in each game. Either consisting of foreign football nerds or ones who support lower league clubs for impartiality.
Get them to score refereeing performance along the lines of:
1 - Right or wrong decision (scale of -5-5, 5 being clearly right, -5 being obviously wrong, and a -1 being a poor decision, and a 3 being a decent decision, for instance).
2 - Level of impact on the game (scale 1-10, 1 being a minor decision like an indirect free kick in a team's own half, and a 10 being a penalty or a red card, so a bad big decision is weighted more heavily than a bunch of small correct decisions).
and 3 - Consistency across the teams played (allowing rotational fouling to be picked up - also scored 1-10)
Each REF gets a mean score from the panel for the match performance, which then adds up over the course of the season.
Each CLUB also gets a reffing consistency score, showing whether they are awarded more decisions or fewer decisions than expected.
The algorithm for the reffing performance score is pretty simple:
Inputs
Decision Quality (D): A score from -5 to +5:
-5: Obviously wrong decision
0: Marginal or unclear decision
+5: Clearly correct decision
Impact on Game (I): A score from 1 to 10 for the impact of the decision, where 1 is a minor decision and 10 is a major decision.
Consistency Across Teams (C): A single score from 1 to 10 representing how evenly the referee applied decisions to both teams.
Step 1: Weighted Decision Scoring
Each decision can be weighted based on its quality and impact:
Weighted Decision Score=D×I
This gives higher weight to decisions with both high impact and poor quality.
Step 2: Average Decision Score
To normalise across all decisions made in the game:
Average Decision Score=∑(Weighted Decision Score)/Total Number of Decisions
This score reflects the overall quality and impact of the referee's decision-making.
Step 3: Consistency Adjustment
Consistency is critical to fairness. Incorporate the consistency score (C) as a multiplier to reward or penalise the referee:
Consistency Adjustment=C/10
This scales the consistency score to a multiplier between 0.1 and 1.
Step 4: Final Refereeing Performance Score
Combine the weighted average score with the consistency adjustment to produce the final score:
Refereeing Performance=(Average Decision Score)×(Consistency Adjustment)
Very impressive piece Pedro..thanks a bunch and lots of good stuff there to take away.
Maybe prompted by TGI Friday bar persons' sexy throw - and -catch decisions (and no doubt tasty rewards) casting a long shadow over your psyche?
""Tenure is no longer important in my system. ""
Totally unacceptable.
Pedro, kudos and chapeau to you for this. It's baffling that someone like you has a 10x better vision of what reffing org should look like, than anyone within the institution(s) actually dealing directly with football. It really should be taken seriously and it is a way to go, hopefully a reboot happens as this is becoming hard to watch (has been for many years ofc).
Charles Watts saying yesterday that Calafiori + Tomi should be back soon after the international break.
As long as there’s no setbacks, if they’re not back for Forest, then it won’t be long after.