Fairly certain he's making a joke that we are going to lose with him reffing and thus Sunderland will be ahead of us.
I don't even look at who's refereeing the game. Regardless of what you might think, decisions generally even themselves out over the course of a season. They really do. Get over it; if we're good enough to win, we'll win. I have a feeling that Sunderland might just be getting a touch over-confident and our team is actually getting stronger and better by the week. 2-1 to City.
Sorry Polly, but that’s bollocks. How could that even scientifically work? Fair enough with regards to your views on refs though. I’m largely the same, although this ref (Jones) and the **** from Leeds do get my attention.
I'm not applying science here Leon, merely common sense I simply cannot accept that refs in English football are bent. I'm prepared to accept that there may be some subconscious bias towards bigger clubs when it comes to pressure on them to award penalties and so on, but for a match between Sunderland and us? Nah.
Allowing for the fact that refs aren't perfect I thought Anthony Taylor was one of the better refs we've had. When Meyler did that tackle in the 2nd half I thought a card might come out. A shame their goal followed shortly after it.
Outdated, but there isnt much in it from last season; http://www.debatabledecisions.com/english-premier-league-tables
I think there are far too many variables to believe that these things even themselves up, or could even do so. I don’t believe referees are ‘bent’ at all. Even if they all are without prejudice (which they’re not because they are human) and free from any kind of explicit or implicit external influence (which again, they’re not) it still would not ensure that mistakes ‘even themselves up’. Can anyone out there explain or give me some sort of evidence that mistakes 'even themselves up' and will consistently happen?
Now were ARE talking science! Those many variables are precisely why they do even themselves out! The more random variables you throw at a situation, the less "engineered" the outcome will be.
They clearly don't even themselves out. If they did, we'd be due a season where we get 40 penalties before long.] This season we've had countless big decisions go against us and the only luck we've had was against West Ham where they should have got a pen for Livermore elbowing the ball. When exactly should we expect it to even itself out?
If you take a look on an opposition's forum after we've played them, most of them mention how **** the ref was for them too. (Although the big clubs do seem to get a clear bias) People seem to remember what goes against them and forget what goes for them.
Right, so throwing random variables into a situation like this guarantees that everything ends up consistently even? Hmmm.
It's not exactly an unproven assertion... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers (I know it's wiki but it was the first link that popped up)
It does not work consistently in football so that every team experiences an equal amount of refereeing mistakes of the same value and proportion. How can it?
Well, you're gonna have to provide some figures to back that up, really. How do you arrive at that figure? I think we need to put a call out to statisticians to find out how many penalties we've conceded against how many we have received! Any offers?
