On Thursday 28th March the following podcast was recorded on the A Celtic State of Mind platform. You can view it here or listen wherever you consume your pods.
For the fifth written follow-up, I consider the distribution of awards of red cards.
Red Card Differentials
I would expect Celtic and Rangers to broadly receive and benefit from a similar number of red cards over the period under review.
Here is the differential between the number of red cards awarded and conceded:
There appears to be a slight correlation between league position and differential in red cards awarded and conceded as we’d expect.
Yet, by this measure, The Rangers lead the way with a differential of 12 red cards more for their opponents than for themselves. Celtic’s differential is four.
The Rangers Z-Score is -2.07 meaning it is outside the 95th percentile and therefore statistically significant. No other result falls into this category.
The (Another) Crawford Allan Coincidence
Using data from the Fitba Stats site, we can see the pattern of red cards received by The Rangers since their promotion to the SPFL Premiership in 2016-17.
The early SPFL Premiership version of The Rangers had a real discipline problem. 25 red cards in Europe and SPFL football in three seasons. Ryan Jack was sent off five times, Alfredo Morelos seven times.
Then, suddenly, the same group of players became paragons of virtue. There was no sending’s off at all from 29th December 2019 to the 18th of January 2022 when Ryan Kent was red-carded at Aberdeen, in Scottish league matches.
Crawford Allan was appointed Head of Referee Operations on 13th January 2020. Over two years passed on his watch when a group of previously highly undisciplined players, suddenly were angelic on the field and did not receive a red card.
Remember, both the 44 league match and 75 league match runs without conceding a penalty also occurred on Allan’s watch at the same time.
Remember, in 2020-21 the cry was “Stop the Ten”. In subsequent seasons, European Champions League Group Stage money was on the line.
Sometimes life is just full of coincidence.
Next up: assessing the overall benefit of penalties and red cards and the patterns therein.
Note: all data is correct to 3rd January 2024.
Polaris says
Your output has always been of interest and eagerly digested by myself, and promptly forwarded to family and friends.
Yet this past week, you’ve outdone yourself.
Your recent ACSOM appearance was brilliant, and I’ve relished these follow-ups.
Thank you for the time you invest to keep this crucial info flowing.
tom m says
Many thanks for the very informative stats, would be very helpful to Scottih football
if the mainstream looked at these stats but i douht they will
Kit says
Thanks for the in depth data and analysis.
Certain SFA representatives would probably have you believe that coincidences happen all the time.
It’ll never change.
Dando says
The game in Scotland is corrupt. What other league in Europe would reward a referee with the biggest game of the season 3 weeks after a VAR performance that was criticised by two top EUFA officials and also supports one of the teams in the game which has a supporters club named after him, corrupt to the core..
HH
celticbynumbers@btinternet.com says
Oh, me, me, me – i know the answer to that
John mcghee says
Scottish football is a disgrace and so is the fuckpigs media thats why you have got x.players from the old club doing there punits on nearly ever sports show and radio like supersevcoboard radio scotland and everyone of them were on EBT SIDELETTERS this is so that they can cover up the cheating from officials…its about time the fans started taking banners to games and get them on tv about the cheating and corrupt sfa.spfl sevco lets get these masonic fuckpigs out of our game before they kill off for good get them removed as soon as possible dirty fuckpigs cheats…
Gedi67 says
What I would like to know is can this data be forwarded to euefa this has to go all the way to the top it’s the only way to deal with this blatant corruption
Vinny says
Ideally, how would you see this proceeding?
Your analysis certainly does prove that there is a case to be considered seriously.
If it were to be followed up, how would this happen? Obviously the investigation would have to be independent therefore the SFA could not be party to the investigatory role. Is there a regulatory procedure theat FIFA/UEFA have in this regard? Any precedent?
Thanks for your hard work. Much appreciated.
Dan Sclare says
The work that goes into this site is much appreciated by me and probably many others that enjoy the true facts rather than the narrative peddled by the MSM. Thanks very much Alan ?
The Cha says
Excellent serious of articles putting meat on the bones eg important info on timings of penalties and Red Cards etc.
Looking at the other teams rather than the simple head to heads, Dundee United and Hibs seem to be unduly favoured, although not to a grotesque degree unlike the unmentionables.
United have been poor in the seasons under review but are favoured here (had they simply given up and weren’t putting in jeopardy challenges that most players do?) and, I think, also on Penalties (same suggestion).
The big oddity here is Hibs here, twice that of Celtic and not far behind Rangers and probably would be ahead if you took out their head to head, as I’m sure they’ve had more than a few in those games.
They’ve hardly been successful in this period (cf Hearts) so are they a disciplined but soft team, which explains why these 3rd place wannabees do poorly against the rest but how to explain their ill-discipline against Rangers?
celticbynumbers@btinternet.com says
Hi
The point is that for each section of analysis there may be team 1,2, or 3 that is an outlier. What is evident from ALL the analysis is that there is ALWAYS Team 12 (The Rangers) as an outlier. That is the key takeaway