The agenda post the Glasgow Derby was to major on the referee. That being the case, I feel empowered to give Collum the CBN treatment!
It is not a unique perspective to say Collum seems to lack any empathy with the players and indeed the sport being played. He seems to prefer a very cold distance with the players. This rather robotic style can probably be tolerated providing the majority of decisions are fair and accurate.
So, putting my personal feelings to one side, how did Oor Wullie get on with the big calls?
The Crime Count
Here is the overall Crime Count table.
This is the second highest Disciplinary Points racked up against Celtic this season. Hearts’ 35 will take some catching. Last season’s high was 36 by St Johnstone in the 0-0 at Celtic Park.
Celtic’s 21 is also a season high which is surprising given how little Celtic were under pressure and the lack of any bad fouls.
The Big Decisions
Most of the post-match noise centred on the lead up to Celtic’s winner. It was claimed that Rogic had fouled Jack in an edge of box clash prior to the fast break that resulted in Ntcham’s decider.
In real time I thought it could have been a foul to The Rangers. My son alerted me to Rogic’s leg contacting Jack as he came down, potentially causing him to lose balance although he seemed to land awkwardly on his ankle.
The ex-English Premier League referee Dermott Gallagher, in a regular review of contentious decisions on Sky Sports, pointed out that Jack jumped into Rogic which was the original foul action. On looking at it again he is absolutely spot on.
Collum was very close and decided to give nothing. I was surprised at the time, but this seems a rare but welcome example of a nuanced call from Collum. It could have gone either way depending on which action your eyes picked up on. Certainly not a major injustice.
On 25 minutes, the officials collectively missed McGregor kicking out behind him to a prone Ajer after an aerial challenge. If you have done Shotokan karate, you’ll know the Ushiro-Geri. It is a particularly vicious strike and very difficult to defend even if you are not laid prone. Studs into the hip joint from such a kick would have been very painful. It was a clear red card offence. There is no more that needs saying.
Other Decisions
Collum’s bad luck started on the 3rd minute. Despite looking at the situation from behind, he missed Lafferty planting his foot onto Lustig’s prone ankle.
As can be seen, Lafferty is perfectly balanced and in control. It wasn’t an out of control accident. The Northern Irishman was allowed a further 3 fouls by the 30th minute for no punishment.
By the 38th minute the two strikers in Blue had racked up 9 fouls between them for no sanction. Morelos was finally booked for his 6th offence.
Collum’s ill luck continued when dealing with Celtic “infractions”. In the 10th minute, Brown slid in, all on the deck, to try and scoop the ball from Lafferty. Showing balletic dexterity, the ex-Hearts player leapt out of the way before rolling around holding seemingly battered legs.
Unfortunately for Collum there was no contact at all. Nevertheless, Brown was immediately booked and played 80 minutes on a yellow. An experienced referee can surely read the players actions?
It got worse for Collum in the 36th minute when Edouard, running towards goal, was nudged in the back by Morelos. Losing balance, he fell into Jack, the Frenchman’s foot landing on Jacks ankle. Another Celtic yellow card. I could sympathise with the whistler as this was difficult to pick up at first viewing.
The final controversy arrived in the 85th minute as another quick Celtic break saw Ntcham release Christie towards goal. Christie cut inside Goldson who put an arm across his chest, briefly. Christie fell over and Collum awarded a free kick on the edge of the area and booked an irate Goldson. This seemed an exaggerated fall from Christie for me with the contact such as it was not commensurate with the falling action. I would not have complained about a card for diving. I am not sure why Christie did not run in on goal.
Conclusion
It is a tactic as old as football to complain about the referee when slipping 7 points off the league lead, and 4 behind your city rivals.
On this occasion however, it seems Celtic were on the rough end of most of the key decisions. If it were the other way around I can assure you I’d say so. For what it is worth.
Good work and a noted change of focus to the man in black. I see your focus has been on the quality of the decision making over ‘controversial’ incidents. The big calls.
I’ve been thinking for a while about a less subjective, hopefully clearer and focused statistical analysis of referee’s comparative performance based on some relatively simple metrics. I wonder what you think? My thoughts were to compile statistics based solely on:
Possession;
Free kicks awarded and conceded;
Yellow cards;
Red cards;
Number of voluntary interventions note free kicks, penalties and stoppages of play for injury.
My contention is that these could form a base for clear, objective and comparative analyses.
For example
Taking your crime count from above and the possession stats from the last article:
Celtic had the ball 60% of the game (76% and 43%, 1st and 2nd half respectively);
Rangers 40% possession;
Celtic conceded 15 fouls Rangers 17;
However Celtic’s possession adjusted foul count (15/2)*(100/40) – would be 19;
Ranger’s equivalent (17/2)*(100/60) – would be 14;
Yellow and red card incidence could be similarly adjusted or presented as simple ratios cards to fouls;
Finally intervention rate could be monitored against a league yard stick.
For any game in isolation these statistics would be relatively meaningless but if they were collected for all matches we should be able to use them to identify isolate and eradicate?? refereeing bias.
What do you think?
I calculate possession adjusted fouls per minute plus fouls per card. Let me dig out the data later. I’ll maybe republish the article.
Thank you. I didn’t see that when you did it previously. I’m interested to have a look.
I haven’t read through all of the following:
https://eprints.qut.edu.au/101574/1/Abdulrhman_Al%20Hazmi_Thesis.pdf
but it raises some great points regarding the physical, emotional, decision making etc. demands made on referees.
Collum is 39. He has to run as many Km as a professional player in a game. Fatigue plays a great part in decision making as does emotional state, crowd reaction, player interaction, concentration levels, subjective interpretations..
IMHO, it is a huge burden placed on one man in a match which will have serious financial consequences if poor decisions are made.
Should refs be changed at half time? Maybe swap places with the 4th official? Reduce the retirement age to 33? Then they can run the line or, heaven forbid, work the VAR. That they should be fully professional and able to have a career, is for me, a given. But there is no doubt that their profession has to enter the 21st century.
You raise some great points. I’d agree refs need all the help they can get and potentially have too many responsibilities on the pitch. That being said, rationally, I’d expect “errors” to be equally spread across the teams refereed.
Why would you expect errors to be equally spread across teams?
Do you mean a particular Ref will, on average, make similar mistakes?
Or will mistakes be made biased against certain teams or individuals by all (or a select group) of Refs?
Or, as I wondered, how much was the value of bets made on a Celtic/Sevco player being booked in the first 10 minutes of a derby game?
What are reliable metrics for refereeing a game?
If a ref is incompetent then he’d make mistakes in all games with an equal chance of impacting any team yes ?
Aye. There’s the rub. An incompetent referee.
An incompetent referee does not correctly apply the rules of the game. Some of the time but not all of the time.
I am interested in the factors that led to him not applying the rules correctly for a given decision.
These reasons can be random and they can be down to poor training and they can be down to the emotional and physical state of the ref on the day.
We accept that luck has a tremendous influence on the outcome of a game. The Beach Ball Effect 🙂 That is due to randomness in play. I would expect randomness to effect a ref’s decisions and perhaps even more so because there is only one of them on the field.
A good football team will try and reduce the effect of randomness (luck) by training and having better players. Like telling Ntcham not to shoot from outside the box so much!
I am interested in the metrics which can be used to analyse refereeing decisions not only to reduce randomness but to increase the skill set of the refs.
I know that you spend a lot of time analysing the team metrics and that you probably don’t have the time or inclination to look at refs in any detail, but I am interested in what you may consider to be the important points of measuring a ref’s performance empirically.
I suspect that a SRA game report on a referee’s performance is purely subjective. They are probably too interested in watching the match.
Apologies for warbling on. I always look forward to your posts and Look forward to the next one.