Institutionalised bias

Illgresi

Illgresi

Illgresi

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Joined
18 Feb 2013
Posts
1,125
Location
Perth
Having just watched Celtic thump Dundee United (I could certainly not be classed as sympathetic to either) three times in a row, three things were abundantly clear. Firstly, Celtic are absolutely miles ahead of Dundee United. Secondly, McNamara is tactically inept, can't spot talent and has no balls what-so-ever (most United fans would agree here). Thirdly, and something thats been painfully obvious for all of eternity is the clear bias towards Celtic in refereeing decisions.

In the three games:

United:

Fouls - 26
Red Cards - 4
Yellow Cards - 7

Celtic:

Fouls - 42
Red Cards - 2
Yellow Cards - 4

Having watched Scottish referees bottle big decisions against the former Old Firm my entire life I thought I would put forward the question; Is this a peculiarly Scottish phenomenon, or are certain teams in every country favourites of referees?

Please note, this isn't intended to be a Celtic or Dundee United (or any other club for that matter) bashing thread, just an open discussion about what I believe to be a very important matter.
 
Purdy said:
Provide us context of the 68 fouls,for all we know there were four leg breaker attempts from Dundee
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I couldn't possibly without having 270+ minutes of footage. It's a perception, and one that I have no doubt is shared by 99% of Scottish football fans. Be that as it may, it's vary hard to prove.

One of United's red cards at least was 100% merited, in the League Cup final when Dillon went over the ball on Izaguirre. Scott Brown puts in horrendous challenges every week, and rarely gets a yellow card.

The point however, was less whether United were being unfairly penalised, but rather that referees bottle/intentionally miss big decisions against certain clubs.

Also which clubs are these, and why?
 
Moses said:
The argument would be that some red cards will be made a big deal of, whereas others won't. Eg. when refs bottle it in major finals, because the big talking point would be the red/it'd ruin that one off game... or in a big Manchester derby, etc. Whereas if there's a red in a Stoke vs Hull match, there aren't going to be many column inches in response/it'll be forgotten by the day after tomorrow.

But it's hard to actually analyse the issue, without a lot of work. A pure statistical analysis of fouls per game, or the ratio of fouls to cards, etc, wouldn't give good enough answers. You'd have to take a sample of games and decide which fouls were missed, by which ref, under what circumstances, etc, etc.
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Agreed, and the statistics I give above don't necessarily prove any point. Not to a neutral at least. Unfortunately, to analyse this would take a huge amount of effort, not least the rights to footage of a broad spectrum of games. Either that, or we have to trust in the neutrality of highlights packages etc. Unfortunately in Scotland that is not a luxury we enjoy.

Whenever I have watched MOTD - something that is becoming increasingly rare these days - I've noticed that the footage is generally fair, albeit weighted towards the bigger games. Of course, there could be many challenges I couldn't know about that go unbroadcast.
 
Illgresi said:
I couldn't possibly without having 270+ minutes of footage. It's a perception, and one that I have no doubt is shared by 99% of Scottish football fans. Be that as it may, it's vary hard to prove.

One of United's red cards at least was 100% merited, in the League Cup final when Dillon went over the ball on Izaguirre. Scott Brown puts in horrendous challenges every week, and rarely gets a yellow card.

The point however, was less whether United were being unfairly penalised, but rather that referees bottle/intentionally miss big decisions against certain clubs.

Also which clubs are these, and why?
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You could go through it all and create a highlights video with all the fouls :D

The thread doesn't really tell us much and can't agree nor disagree with you as there is nothing to back it up
 
Purdy said:
You could go through it all and create a highlights video with all the fouls :D

The thread doesn't really tell us much and can't agree nor disagree with you as there is nothing to back it up.
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I'd love to have the time and patience and access to the footage, but I don't! :p

The thread to be fair, isn't meant to be about this specific case, but about peoples perceptions about their own team's league.

This is the last of United's red cards:

https://youtu.be/4uJ0K51tD_o

The commentary must be from Celtic TV. Personally don't think it's too bad a challenge. He goes over the ball, but his foot is low and nowhere near the Celtic player. Most of the contact is with his hip. Though I could understand someone from say Spain thinking it's a 15 game ban; that's just how we say hello up here. :D

To me it's a clear case of a weak referee being hounded by an unsportsmanlike team, and desperate to make the tteams even after having to send a Celtic player off two minutes prior.
 
Every red card issued in all the previous games have been merited apart from van Dijk's which was correctly rescinded.

You need to look at the severity of the tackles too, it's not just about the amount of fouls commited. Dundee probably should've had another red card last night after the keeper caught Griffiths in the first few minutes.

Here's a better video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKprW_h5l9g
 
Brown at least got the ball and made a genuine effort to get to it. Suppose you missed Ciftci kick Brown in the face straight after that tackle which he got off with?
 
You're also forgetting the clear dive in that game which gave Dundee United a penalty. 5:05 on the video and watch the replay.
 
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