Officiating bias in football (soccer)?

[JCtips]

A recent study proved what many football fans already suspected, that home teams are likely to receive more penalties, but crucially, this is more likely with inexperienced referees. So building referee profiles can clearly be a very important "tool". I ran some statistics on the top Portuguese referees and here's some interesting findings: Elmano Santos Home team victories = 29 (64%) Draws = 5 (12%) Away teams victories = 11 (24%) Under/Over = 22 (49%) / 23 (51%) Augusto Duarte Home team victories = 16 (50%) Draws = 9 (28%) Away teams victories = 7 (22%) Under/Over = 21 (66%) / 11 (34%) Pedro Henriques Home team victories = 12 (27%) Draws = 15 (33%) Away teams victories = 18 (40%) Under/Over = 29 (64%) / 16 (36%) Bruno Paixão Home team victories = 16 (34%) Draws = 12 (26%) Away teams victories = 19 (40%) Under/Over = 28 (60%) / 19 (40%) Even though this is a small sample (it will be hard to get a larger one regarding specific refs because they've got a limited career duration...) we can draw some conclusions from here. There seems to be a clear indication that some refs are more afected by the home crowd pressure which results in a higher % of victories for the home team. Ref Elmano Santos has a 64% home record. On the other hand, some refs seem to be less afected by it. Ref Pedro Henriques, seen by most people in the Country as the best ref at the moment and as someone who is hardly pressured, has a 27% (or 73% for the draw/away win) home record!!! This might even suggest that his attitude is kind of "I'm the boss here" one (trying too hard to show that he's not subject to outside pressure). We've gotta look at all the angles if we have a long term profit goal, this is another one. Anyone that has similar ref data regarding the EPL or any other European League please share it. Cheers. JC

[mr onemore]

Re: Officiating bias in football (soccer)? I find this an intersting angle - good post. Just thinking, perhaps a more useful stat would be to compare the percentage for home wins you give above, with the bookies expectation of home wins (using their odds) for these games - that way the bias of a particular referee could be established. It's a small sample, as you say, but with a lot more data I wouldn't be surprised to find a couple of referees that were worth following :)