ahem. Meant to add...

....if you think that mistakes more often lead to goals being disallowed wrongly that allowed wrongly, (including penalties not being awarded that should have) then a team that does a lot of defending is likely to suffer, overall.

If, on the other hand, you think refs err more often in giving goals wrongly, rather than not giving them wrongly, then a team that spends lots of time in its own penalty area etc might benefit, overall.

I have no idea which of the two above tend to happen more often, but it probably does matter.

(I do agree, though, that a club like us does also suffer from 'bias' - though suspect it's largely unconscious bias rather than anything more deliberate. Crowd noise larger at the bigger stadia, which I'm sure makes a difference; reputations of the most famous players affecting refs when they don't even realise it's happening; and just a general, in conscious assumption that some unknown defender from a little club is just more likely to have missed the ball in a tackle, been desperate enough to use his hand etc. So my instinct is that we will benefit - though likely to depend on precisely who decides to go to VAR. Which I don't know.)

That's what I think, anyway.

Posted By: Tricky Hawes, Apr 29, 16:31:55