By focussing on one or two incidents, it’s missing the bigger picture that I think is the club’s angle with being more vociferous in the last few weeks than the meekness of the past 6 years. It’s the rate of bad calls we get being above average in the league, suggesting that something is not quite right with the way PGMOL ref us.
If you take subjective decisions across all teams in the Premier league, most would be within a standard deviation. Some more favourable than others. Standard stuff.
However, across Klopp’s time with us, for subjective decisions, maybe the club feels we are way past one standard deviation in the wrong direction. The Tomkins Salah analysis shows that Mo is WAY past the threshold, into the extreme outlier territory that screams something is absolutely not right.
Mo finally gets a penalty, and the media thinks all is well in the world, and nothing to see here. But a few good decisions doesn’t wipe out all the past injustices.
For me, I think the club is finally standing up for itself to make PGMOL etc look inwards and actually reflect. Make them uncomfortable so that they cannot continue to hide behind ineptness, especially with the results of their biases in plain view (note that the mainstream media will hardly ever pick up on the actual issues at the “population level”, and just focus on the “individual level” incidents and explain them away).
Otherwise, it will continue with the same old shit.
They literally complained about the two incidents. I don’t know what anyone thinks this will achieve aside from making us look like sore losers. Klopp has publicly questioned Tierney and his decisions against us and no ref has been assigned to more games with one club than him and us. And it’s got Klopp a touchline ban. When exactly do you the introspection and reflection will begin?
Literally every single club and set of fans will say the same thing. No one thinks they get the rub of the green when it comes to decisions. How can all the refs be biased against all the clubs?
The Salah anomaly I’ll admit is quite stark but could you point out at least one other bias that is in plain view?
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 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.
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.
Okay, it’s a quirk but is there evidence that players should have been given second yellows and haven’t or is it just using the average and saying it happens less often to our opponents than others?
More noticeable when the team that does it the least does it? So a bias perhaps but an unconscious one rather than a malicious one.
I’ve not had time to read the whole thing but it just seems to say “here’s the average and Liverpool are below that”. By their nature, an average will some above and some below it. The fact it comes from a prominent Liverpool site suggests there’s a likelihood of some confirmation bias going on there. Give all that data to an Arsenal fan or a City fan and I bet they’d find something to prove refs bias against them too.
Are we seriously suggesting there’s a coordinated effort to treat Liverpool differently? Why would that be the case? And it comes back to my point, what does publicly complaining about it hope to achieve?
I am not going to debate our penalty record at Anfield. But in the PL overall we have had 4 (10th in the league), in 21/22 we had 8 (=3rd and only 1 less than Chelsea and City), then a huge outlier in 19/20 where we had 5 (=6th but way off United and City’s total) and in 18/19 we had 7 (=4th but again miles behind United).
19/20 is the unusual one. Usually the teams winning get the most penalties which helps explain our lower figures in 20/21 and this year. Its not necessarily bias from the ref as its likely the winning teams spend a great deal of time setting up super dangerous situations. But then in 19/20 we got very little. We had no crowd. I wonder if that came into it. Which might make the situation even more galling knowing that if we didnt have a crowd things would be even worse. If you want to look at it that way.
I think there is a lot of bias with the refs when it comes to penalties. But probably not in the way others think. I think refs respond to public pressure on their decisions, even though they shouldn’t. Look at United. The world would call them Penalty United because they managed to usually lead the penalty table even when they were having a crap year. Now in recent years they have had 5 (21/22) and 2 this year. They are definitely being treated differently because of the public.
Liverpool always have opposition fans saying how we get favourable penalty treatment at Anfield. Now its a barren wasteland. I wonder if we as fans, and the club, bring more attention to this fact whether things will change, and I have a feeling the answer will be yes. Again, because the refs just give in to whatever the public are criticising them of at the time.
So I hold the position that the refs are weak and human but they don’t necessarily have it in for us - just that they give in to peer pressure. Its fun kicking Liverpool for other fans and they are reaping rewards because of it.
@Mascot is about to mention goals scored, but I think something far more accurate is touches in the box, which I couldnt find stats on, at least not over seasons.
Its easy to understand using logic how a team playing City’s style would get more penalties than us for instance. Lots more touches in the box because they can work their way slowly to goal with clever passes from midfield.
If I could picture a quintessential Liverpool goal it would be Salah or Nunez playing off the shoulder and running into miles of space behind the defence. We just don’t tend to have that much possession in the box it doesnt feel at least, as we are not so intricate with our passing as City.
EDIT: If someone could find a good source of touches in opposition box per match I’d be happy to connect that up to penalty stats to see how it looks.
No, I think the stat is saying that Liverpool are bottom, when you look at the pens awarded against the actual time spent attacking. You wouldn’t expect a team who sit deep and defend to get a lot of pens. Given the amount of time Liverpool spend pegging teams back camping in the final third the lack of penalties is absurd.
If you’ll allow me to speculate for a moment, this is what I think is going on. I think there is a perception (unfounded, but possibly a hangover from the past) that the Anfield crowd influence referees. So referees are turning up in siege mode, already thinking ‘I need to be strong today’.
Yea I think that could well be part of. Also, we have heard former referees admit that they let a players reputation influence their decisions (Reason for Kane not seeing red against us last year was that he doesn’t get many red’s!). So if they’ve got it in their head that Salah dives a lot, he won’t be getting a pen from them even if he’s rugby tackled.
And if it’s the case, which is likely, then LFC must get their video analysts to collate all the decisions and non decisions on it and approach PGMOL (quietly!) In the off season in the hope that he will at least be fairly treated next season.
The data on pens, the outlier that Salah is in terms of fouls, the performances of certain refs vs Liverpool has been trod out on here (and before) ad nauseum.
There are supporters who question these stats and attempt to discredit the evidence by application of logic, in what is probably a chaotic set of circumstances.
No matter what method of analysing stats, Mo Salah is discriminated against by refs.
I can’t see anyone disputing that?
The question is “why”…
Sadio Mane is last player to be double yellow carded vs Liverpool? Why?
@jaffod has singled out several “curious” decisions that cost the club dearly.
Kompany foul on Salah…
Keita non pen vs Leicester…
Again, why?
People can discredit statistics all day long, and statistics may themselves be biased…
But the treatment of Liverpool players… Suarez, Salah and the individual season costing decisions cannot be easlily accounted for.
I don’t think there is a coorinated effort.
Thats a bit easy, like the standard responses in the TIA bias thread.
I think Liverpool get the thin edge of the wedge for a number of reasons, SKY, Murdoch, different agendas over the years.
As I said in previous post, we have had season defining moments fuck us over
Are you suggesting this is all coincidence?
Or could there be a bias by certain officials against the club?
Not organised like a grand conspiracy. But actually there?
Edit:
We should complain in order to halt it.
The blatant decisions
And the less visible.
But time attacking doesn’t automatically mean your players get fouled more often. There’s a correlation but the cause of penalties is fouls in the box, not time spent in the opposition half.
The only way you can prove that is to review each and every potential penalty incident and see what percentage are given or not. And even that isn’t fool proof. Take the Henderson one at the weekend. Would go in the category of “seen them given but would be annoyed if it were given against you”. There’s a lower expectation of getting those than a clear stonewall one like the one Fulham got at the weekend.
If it can be shown we get a far lower than average number of the “seen it given” types and less of the stonewall types than other teams then perhaps there’s something in it. As it is, we’re saying attacking equates to more penalties and that’s far too simplistic a dataset on which to suggest there’s a bias against awarding us penalties.
So is the suggestion that this is only happening at Anfield at not when we’re the away side because that would require a whole other layer of analysis.
Everyone thinks officials are biased against them. Two minutes on Google turns up countless articles with fans and coaches thinking the refs are out to get them.
I mean, here’s one from an Arsenal site that reckons Tierney will favour the home team in their upcoming game. That game happens to be against Liverpool. So we think he’s biased against us but Arsenal fans think he’s biased against them. Talk about a devil on each shoulder.
There are hundreds of thousands of decisions referees make across all the games in a season. People like to cherry pick a tiny number to illustrate bias against them when the overwhelming evidence is that they’re just not very good at their job sometimes.
The club complaining about it so publicly will do nothing to turn the favour our way. If anything they’ll just be more conscious of giving us 50/50 decisions for fear of being accused of letting the club and Klopp influence them.
I think the first time I read about the penalty issue, it was in relation to how we’re literally the team with the highest (or second-highest) number of touches in the opponent’s penalty box, and yet have the fewest penalties to show for it. This was in February though I think?
Thats the way @Rambler counters any suggestion of biases versus Liverpool. Pull up comments from other supporters.
It answers nothing, save suggesting that anyone presenting these views are lumped in with disenchanted supporters elsewhere.
To be honest, all of this is discussed over and over again.
Using other supporters views isn’t the way to answer the stats posted by Mascot or indeed the questions some of us are asking.
