Lack of Penalty Decisions

[mozo]

I'm sorry but that's not an anomaly, there's got to be more to it. 

It would be interesting to see how our penalty appeals stack up against other clubs. Probably the same.

[cityal]

I wonder how many standard deviations we are off of the mean for this data.

It feels like this is in the sort of territory of flipping two coins and having BOTH land on the edge.

[ExiledAjax]

11 minutes ago, mozo said:

I'm sorry but that's not an anomaly, there's got to be more to it. 

It would be interesting to see how our penalty appeals stack up against other clubs. Probably the same.

Yeh. These graphs are ok, but they assume that every team has the same number of claims per minute.

We know that for a significant portion of the period measured we've been absolute dogshit at attacking. It's only in the last 50 or so games that we've been better going forward, and even that is essentially an improvement from "non-existent" to "average".

These graphs are nice headlines that will do well on Twitter and tell people what they already believe. But they're shallow.

What about the previous 87 matches?

What about on a seasonal basis?

Do they consider which referees we've had, which referees other teams have had, and their personal frequency of giving penalties?

So far we've got a hypothesis, and some data that shows it merits investigation, but it's no more than that atm.

 

Edited August 18, 2022 by ExiledAjax

[mozo]

7 minutes ago, ExiledAjax said:

Yeh. These graphs are ok, but they assume that every team has the same number of claims per minute.

We know that for a significant portion of the period measured we've been absolute dogshit at attacking. It's only in the last 50 or so games that we've been better going forward, and even that is essentially an improvement from "non-existent" to "average".

These graphs are nice headlines that will do well on Twitter and tell people what they already believe. But they're shallow.

What about the previous 87 matches?

What about on a seasonal basis?

Do they consider which referees we've had, which referees other teams have had, and their personal frequency of giving penalties?

So far we've got a hypothesis, and some data that shows it merits investigation, but it's no more than that atm.

 

You're absolutely right to want to see more data than just this very limited surface headline data.

What I would say is, these figures support what City fans have seen with their own eyes and have been saying for ages.

It is undeniable that there have been many penalty appeals, certainly in the past 12 months.

But there won't be data on appeals, and certainly not 'quality' of appeal.

[Redandproud]

Ok, the club has received an apology letter regarding the Hull City game,stating it was not a penalty to them,we should have had 2penalties, ok, then replay the game ,strip Hull City of the 3pts, different referee, or still strip them of all 3pts , and give 1pt to each team, but they won't, incompetent referee again, bring VAR to the Championship, 

[ExiledAjax]

3 minutes ago, mozo said:

What I would say is, these figures support what City fans have seen with their own eyes and have been saying for ages.

It is undeniable that there have been many penalty appeals, certainly in the past 12 months.

But there won't be data on appeals, and certainly not 'quality' of appeal.

I agree the figures and graphs support the facts. What they don't do is explain the reasons for those facts. 

You're right that such data is probably either not collected, or not available to your average statistician.

I'm also btw not denying that we've had some rotten decisions. I was sat right in front of Scott's claim against Forest last autumn. It was a certain penalty. Certain.

[downendcity]

17 minutes ago, mozo said:

You're absolutely right to want to see more data than just this very limited surface headline data.

What I would say is, these figures support what City fans have seen with their own eyes and have been saying for ages.

It is undeniable that there have been many penalty appeals, certainly in the past 12 months.

But there won't be data on appeals, and certainly not 'quality' of appeal.

I think we'd all agree that for a few seasons the lack of penalty decisions probably reflects our poor attacking threat and that we too rarely threatened the opposition penalty area.

However, what we all see is the number of very "soft" penalties awarded to other team ( both playing against us and more widely, on telly) as compared to the reasonably clear penalty shouts we have regularly turned down. Already this season compare the Hull penalty that was given with the foul on Atkinson on Tuesday that wasn't. 

As is often commented upon on a wider basis, but perhaps this is a consequence of us being too "nice" a team, that we don't get into referees faces , as do other teams, to appeal vociferously when one of ours is fouled in the penalty area. 

[BCFC101]

46 minutes ago, ExiledAjax said:

Yeh. These graphs are ok, but they assume that every team has the same number of claims per minute.

We know that for a significant portion of the period measured we've been absolute dogshit at attacking. It's only in the last 50 or so games that we've been better going forward, and even that is essentially an improvement from "non-existent" to "average".

These graphs are nice headlines that will do well on Twitter and tell people what they already believe. But they're shallow.

What about the previous 87 matches?

What about on a seasonal basis?

Do they consider which referees we've had, which referees other teams have had, and their personal frequency of giving penalties?

So far we've got a hypothesis, and some data that shows it merits investigation, but it's no more than that atm.

 

I absolutely agree with most of your points across this thread, all things that will have certainly contributed to why the statistic looks like it does, and your reasoning is probably the closest to the real reason for why we're seeing this. There definitely isn't a conspiracy against us, because why would there be, and the likelihood is that it's just chance, bad luck, whatever you want to call it, which happens to be at an extreme end of the scale over the last couple of years.

And even then I can't help myself but question a couple of things

We know that for a significant portion of the period measured we've been absolute dogshit at attacking. It's only in the last 50 or so games that we've been better going forward, and even that is essentially an improvement from "non-existent" to "average".

The latest 2 graphs shown here by myself and spudski are measuring the most recent 87 matches we've played, starting from our game v Huddersfield on 3rd November 2020, up to and including Luton game on Tuesday. Within that data set we have the whole of the 21/22 season, just over 50% of the contributing data, where we had the best attack out of all teams outside the top 6 in the Championship (based on goals scored alone, I do of course appreciate that having the best attack is subjective and there are more factors). So for me the 'poor in attack' argument struggles to hold up for this data set. 

What about the previous 87 matches?

The link posted by BCFCGav on the 1st page covers a data set which includes 101 matches before the latest 2 graphs posted this morning. Unfortunately (in the case of this point) there are 62 matches which overlap both data sets so we're not able to make an exact comparison in the way that you're after. I think we can attribute more weight to the 'poor in attack' argument for that data set, although it does stand out to me that the headline statistic actually gets even worse during the 'slightly better than poor in attack' period as opposed to that first set..

The main reason these graphs are popping up is just the magnitude of the anomaly being shown. When 90 other teams are shown to be in a relatively flat line at the bottom, it'd be hard to ignore even the Port Vale anomaly which will almost certainly have an explanation, let alone the Bristol City dot which is up in the heavens compared to the other 90 dots.

Edited August 18, 2022 by BCFC101

[BilboBaggins05]

I think people aren’t realising just how far away we are from everyone else in these graphs. This is an average of 0.5 penalties per season compared to an average of 7 per season. 
 

An anomaly doesn’t begin to describe being multiple standard deviations away from the average 

[WarksRobin]

would be interesting to compare number of penalties per box entry over the same period

[BCFC101]

11 minutes ago, BilboBaggins05 said:

I think people aren’t realising just how far away we are from everyone else in these graphs. This is an average of 0.5 penalties per season compared to an average of 7 per season. 
 

An anomaly doesn’t begin to describe being multiple standard deviations away from the average 

I think the realisation is there and that’s why we’re having this discussion. The statistic has caught everyone’s attention because it is truly astounding and you’re right that at face value, calling it an anomaly would be an understatement. However, people are now eager to understand just why this is the case. There is definitely going to be a number of reasons for it, some which have been called out already, but these don’t account for the whole gap between us and the rest of the EFL and there are will be many more reasons. As it stands we don’t have all of the information and data required to explain fully what’s going on here, but the direction that the conversation is going in is to try find those additional reasons. 

[SBB]

1 hour ago, Red-Al said:

Ok, the club has received an apology letter regarding the Hull City game,stating it was not a penalty to them,we should have had 2penalties, ok, then replay the game ,strip Hull City of the 3pts, different referee, or still strip them of all 3pts , and give 1pt to each team, but they won't, incompetent referee again, bring VAR to the Championship, 

It wasn’t any fault of Hull though. They shouldn’t be punished for the inadequacies of the referee, the referee should be. 
I’d like to see a league table for professional referees and have their performances in black and white stats for all to see. They are paid extremely well so should absolutely be under pressure to perform and get decisions correct. 

[Mr Popodopolous]

38 minutes ago, BilboBaggins05 said:

I think people aren’t realising just how far away we are from everyone else in these graphs. This is an average of 0.5 penalties per season compared to an average of 7 per season. 
 

An anomaly doesn’t begin to describe being multiple standard deviations away from the average 

 

17 minutes ago, BCFC101 said:

I think the realisation is there and that’s why we’re having this discussion. The statistic has caught everyone’s attention because it is truly astounding and you’re right that at face value, calling it an anomaly would be an understatement. However, people are now eager to understand just why this is the case. There is definitely going to be a number of reasons for it, some which have been called out already, but these don’t account for the whole gap between us and the rest of the EFL and there are will be many more reasons. As it stands we don’t have all of the information and data required to explain fully what’s going on here, but the direction that the conversation is going in is to try find those additional reasons. 

Fwiw I suspect that we are below the average for output and xP (expected Penalties- yes I probably made it up that term) over the period -remember all those games, 1 shot on target etc- but not 14 fold!

On the other hand, we certainly have conceded a few in the same time period- about to double check now...when I say conceded, some were missed or saved but awarded against.

I make it 15. That is from 1st November 2020 to present, 1 penalty in the League for and 15 penalties in the League against.

Edited August 18, 2022 by Mr Popodopolous

[Mr Popodopolous]

6 hours ago, GrahamC said:

Diedhiou missed one at Swansea.

We also got one- one that was deemed soft in a match report in the Times - v Swansea at home in 2020/21.

[ExiledAjax]

31 minutes ago, BCFC101 said:

we had the best attack out of all teams outside the top 6 in the Championship (based on goals scored alone, I do of course appreciate that having the best attack is subjective and there are more factors).

Thanks for your intelligent and patient post. Love a good discussion.

As you say, we scored the most goals outside of the top 6. That's different to having the best attack, and certainly different to having an attack geared towards getting penalties.

For most of the period were talking about we've score goals from low frequency, but high quality shots.

I've tracked our shot data myself over that time and at no point (since Cardiff away on 10 Nov 2019) have we ever been averaging more than 11 shots per game across a 10 game sample. Every season in question has finished with us taking an average of fewer than 11 shots per game.

How does that stack up against the rest of our Division? Poorly.

According to whoscored in 2019/20 only 2 teams had fewer shots per game than us and 20 teams averaged more than 11 for the season. In 2020/21 we had that desperate average of 7.8, comfortably the lowest (23rd spot had 9.6), and 13 teams took more than 11 shots per game. In 2021/22, when we scored the 7th highest number of goals...we were 19th in the shots per game table, and again 15 teams took 11 or more shots per game. So far this season - again just 9.5 shots per game, 18th in that metric, and 16 teams have 11 or more shots per game.

So yes we've scored goals, but our attack is based on quality not quantity.

I would posit that it is quantity that gets you penalties.

Big caveat that I'm using shots per game in lieu of preferable data such as the infamous "box entries". Hell even time spent in opponents box would be useful here. But this is what I have and it indicates that our attack is not, and has not been, geared towards getting a high number of penalty awards.

30 minutes ago, WarksRobin said:

would be interesting to compare number of penalties per box entry over the same period

Yes it would. Can someone please call Lee Johnson and get him on that?

[BilboBaggins05]

It’s hard to quantify what a penalty is as it’s often so inconsistent with what’s given, but we have definitely had some absolute stonewallers not given. Over the last 12 months I think I’ve recounted 5-6 that are stonewall and another 5-6 that we’ve had similar given against us.

 

Fun game for anyone, go on Twitter and search the @Bristolcitylive account for the word ‘penalty’

[Redandproud]

1 hour ago, SBB said:

It wasn’t any fault of Hull though. They shouldn’t be punished for the inadequacies of the referee, the referee should be. 
I’d like to see a league table for professional referees and have their performances in black and white stats for all to see. They are paid extremely well so should absolutely be under pressure to perform and get decisions correct. 

Wait a minute, wasn't it the Hull player buying a penalty when he wasn't fouled,(minimal contact) ran a further 3ft before falling forward, and the ref pointed to the spot, and yes ,the referee should be punished for making the mistake, this is where VAR comes on, it's needed 

[East Londoner]

30 minutes ago, Red-Al said:

Wait a minute, wasn't it the Hull player buying a penalty when he wasn't fouled,(minimal contact) ran a further 3ft before falling forward, and the ref pointed to the spot, and yes ,the referee should be punished for making the mistake, this is where VAR comes on, it's needed 

And they seem to have quietly dropped the charge and 3 match ban for those deemed to have deceived the official 

Of course Bailey Wright was one of the few (or only player) to be hit with that 

[Olé]

4 hours ago, ExiledAjax said:

What about the previous 87 matches?

What about on a seasonal basis?

So far we've got a hypothesis, and some data that shows it merits investigation, but it's no more than that atm.

That was my reaction at about 3am today during my daily period of insomnia. The first question in my head was what other data points could serve as a control for this level of anomaly.

 

Not 100% reliable but I decided that a) the level of fouls sustained on the pitch and b) the level of activity performed in the box, should have some correlation to level of penalty awards.

On a) this number is available, on b) I looked for box entries data (shout out LJ!) but couldn't find it so settled for shots taken in the 18 or 6 yard boxes (regardless of whether on target). 

This data shows little correlation for Bristol City's level of penalty awards - City are far from the least fouled team in the division and bar one season, far from least attacking team either.

Without this correlation, the hypothesis holds: something else is distinguishing City on penalty awards. Your point about "which refs" is fair, but over a large sample that should even out.

 

So what is driving City to be so badly off in such a specific category - penalty awards - when City's league ranking in related statistics don't correspond. And why for such a long period?

You asked about beyond the previous 87 matches (perception of Pezza's "since November 2020" stat), well that view does still bare out the trend. We can go back to the start of 18-19.

In every season since then, City has been awarded the lowest or second lowest number of penalties in the division, with the highest games / penalty ratio (more than double most clubs).

Only once - shots in the area in 20/21 - does any of City's rankings in related statistics fall as low as our ranking consistently lands on penalties awarded. No other team has this pattern.

And this is now on a much larger sample of data (5 seasons, one in progress). Consistently worse than City's ranking over that period for being fouled, or (in most cases) shots in the box. 

 

Finally, the focus on 2020 onwards is because the trend has become even more pronounced (and ridiculous), and something else in that period has too - penalties awarded against City. 

Since the start of 20-21, as well as having this extraordinary outlier on lowest number of penalties awarded, we are simultaneously top 3 for having the most penalties given against us.

This is a curious twist given the level at which City are fouled, or have fouled, in the same period, is pretty average - with City more fouled than fouling anywhere elsewhere on the pitch.

How have we managed to reach two highly polarised extremes of penalty decision making when related statistics show no such extremes - and what (or who!) links those two decisions?

 

Here's the analysis, over to you @ExiledAjax :

Since 2020 - Penalties Awarded, Penalties Conceded vs Fouls

 

Since 2018 - Penalties Awarded vs Fouls, Shots in the Area

Edited August 18, 2022 by Olé

[The Original OTIB]

7 minutes ago, Olé said:

That was my reaction at about 3am today during my daily period of insomnia. The first question in my head was what other data points could serve as a control for this level of anomaly.

 

Not 100% reliable but I decided that a) the level of fouls sustained on the pitch and b) the level of activity performed in the box, should have some correlation to level of penalty awards.

On a) this number is available, on b) I looked for box entries data (shout out LJ!) but couldn't find it so settled for shots taken in the 18 or 6 yard boxes (regardless of whether on target). 

This data shows little correlation for Bristol City's level of penalty awards - City are far from the least fouled team in the division and bar one season, far from least attacking team either.

Without this correlation, the hypothesis holds: something else is distinguishing City on penalty awards. Your point about "which refs" is fair, but over a large sample that should even out.

 

So what is driving City to be so badly off in such a specific category - penalty awards - when City's league ranking in related statistics don't correspond. And why for such a long period?

You asked about beyond the previous 87 matches (perception of Pezza's "since November 2020" stat), well that view does still bare out the trend. We can go back to the start of 18-19.

In every season since then, City has been awarded the lowest or second lowest number of penalties in the division, with the highest games / penalty ratio (more than double most clubs).

Only once - shots in the area in 20/21 - does any of City's rankings in related statistics fall as low as our ranking consistently lands on penalties awarded. No other team has this pattern.

And this is now on a much larger sample of data (5 seasons, one in progress). Consistently worse than City's ranking over that period for being fouled, or (in most cases) shots in the box. 

 

Finally, the focus on 2020 onwards is because the trend has become even more pronounced (and ridiculous), and something else in that period has too - penalties awarded against City. 

Since the start of 20-21, as well as having this extraordinary outlier on lowest number of penalties awarded, we are simultaneously top 3 for having the most penalties given against us.

This is a curious twist given the level at which City are fouled, or have fouled, in the same period, is pretty average - with City more fouled than fouling anywhere elsewhere on the pitch.

How have we managed to reach two highly polarised extremes of penalty decision making when related statistics show no such extremes - and what (or who!) links those two decisions?

 

Here's the analysis, over to you @ExiledAjax :

Since 2020 - Penalties Awarded, Penalties Conceded vs Fouls

 

Since 2018 - Penalties Awarded vs Fouls, Shots in the Area

If anyone is an insider within the gambling industry, it would be fascinating to see the betting trends on penalties for games involving City. One for the conspiracy theorists.

[mozo]

1 hour ago, ExiledAjax said:

Thanks for your intelligent and patient post. Love a good discussion.

As you say, we scored the most goals outside of the top 6. That's different to having the best attack, and certainly different to having an attack geared towards getting penalties.

For most of the period were talking about we've score goals from low frequency, but high quality shots.

I've tracked our shot data myself over that time and at no point (since Cardiff away on 10 Nov 2019) have we ever been averaging more than 11 shots per game across a 10 game sample. Every season in question has finished with us taking an average of fewer than 11 shots per game.

How does that stack up against the rest of our Division? Poorly.

According to whoscored in 2019/20 only 2 teams had fewer shots per game than us and 20 teams averaged more than 11 for the season. In 2020/21 we had that desperate average of 7.8, comfortably the lowest (23rd spot had 9.6), and 13 teams took more than 11 shots per game. In 2021/22, when we scored the 7th highest number of goals...we were 19th in the shots per game table, and again 15 teams took 11 or more shots per game. So far this season - again just 9.5 shots per game, 18th in that metric, and 16 teams have 11 or more shots per game.

So yes we've scored goals, but our attack is based on quality not quantity.

I would posit that it is quantity that gets you penalties.

Big caveat that I'm using shots per game in lieu of preferable data such as the infamous "box entries". Hell even time spent in opponents box would be useful here. But this is what I have and it indicates that our attack is not, and has not been, geared towards getting a high number of penalty awards.

Yes it would. Can someone please call Lee Johnson and get him on that?

I would have thought that dribbles in the box and passes in the box would be more relevant than shots (besides handball decisions)?

Surely with Weimann and Semenyo in our attack, not to mention  Alex Scott being a master modern day diver, you'd think our attack is prime for winning penalties and my hazy memory tells me that Semenyo had a fair few appeals last season.

[sh1t_ref_again]

4 hours ago, spudski said:

Same guy has done a graph showing all 92 clubs.

It's truly astounding.

 

I saw this on Twitter and it was being raised about the selective start date as I am guessing we may have had penalties just before, which would change the average.

Not sure if this is correct, or someone can clarify why start in the middle of November part way through a season

[Mr Popodopolous]

25 minutes ago, sh1t_ref_again said:

I saw this on Twitter and it was being raised about the selective start date as I am guessing we may have had penalties just before, which would change the average.

Not sure if this is correct, or someone can clarify why start in the middle of November part way through a season

That season begun on September 12th iirc owing to Covid or the weekend of it anyway.

Regardless, in a City specific context- we got 2 penalties 1st 9 games and conceded 1.

Therefore, from start of 2020/21 to present in the League, 3 for and 16 against. Healthier ratio sure but still 5.33:1.

I'd wager we are still quite poorly served...conceding 1 every 6 games, gaining 1 every 32 in that timeframe.

Edited August 18, 2022 by Mr Popodopolous

[ExiledAjax]

@Olé now we are getting somewhere. Top work. It's a nice methodology, and yes shots in the box and fouls in general is useful, although you acknowledge it's not really what we want if we really want to look at this. A shot being taken in the box could be read as an indication that a team is unlikely to get a penalty - because generally a penalty would be granted prior to a shot being taken. Does this instead show that we've been too honest? Not wily enough? Have we stood our ground and gone for the shot when we could have taken the fall? Perhaps it is now I who is straying too far into supposition.

I note that in 2019/20, 2020/21, and 2021/22 we were joint lowest (or near lowest) in terms of the raw number of pens awarded, and the clubs we shared that position with had, in some instances, a higher level of box shots than we did in such seasons. Now perhaps those teams were subjected to the same unfair treatment that we have received for just one season, but that demonstrates that we are not the only outliers at times. It shows that our correlation in this regard is not unique, nor is it unusual. The unique thing about our situation is its persistence rather than its existence. Still worth investigating, perhaps even more worthy of investigation, but not quite the crazy situation we are assuming it is.

As someone alluded to above, the weird thing isn't that we've flipped a coin and had it land on its edge - it's that this has happened 3 or 4 times in a row.

47 minutes ago, Olé said:

No other team has this pattern.

One team I'd look at here are Huddersfield. Bar 2019/20 they have pretty similar 'box shot' and 'foul' numbers to us in your second table. They have had 6 penalties over the past 96 matches. Double our own number, but still at a frequency well below what appears to be the reasonably expected average of about 4 to 6 penalties per season. Are their fans having similar (exceptionally high quality) discussions as we are? I've not heard their rumblings.

I'm happy to have my mind changed, and ultimately I cannot offer a concrete answer to your final question. What I am trying to do is test the data, ask the questions, and dig beneath the headline figures in an attempt to find the reason beyond "referees hate Bristol City and demonstrate that hatred through the specific denial of penalties".

Ultimately I think we can all agree on two things:

1. on the face of it Bristol City have for a long time been awarded an abnormally low number of penalties;
2. we have imperfect data available to properly analyse why this may have been.

I've not addressed the question around the number of penalties awarded against us. It's a nice quirk, but honestly I find it hard to consider the two issues to be linked. The sport does not require referees to award penalties on a tit-for-tat basis, and the rules of the game say nothing about that. 

38 minutes ago, The Original OTIB said:

If anyone is an insider within the gambling industry, it would be fascinating to see the betting trends on penalties for games involving City. One for the conspiracy theorists.

I mean look, if someone investigates all of this properly (i.e. is paid to do it) and it comes out that we are the sole victims of an elaborate ruse masterminded by the gambling industry, EFL Championship referees then fair play. But also, how stupid do you have to be to make your ruse so bleedingly obvious?

Edited August 18, 2022 by ExiledAjax

[The Original OTIB]

18 minutes ago, ExiledAjax said:

@Olé now we are getting somewhere. Top work. It's a nice methodology, and yes shots in the box and fouls in general is useful, although you acknowledge it's not really what we want if we really want to look at this. A shot being taken in the box could be read as an indication that a team is unlikely to get a penalty - because generally a penalty would be granted prior to a shot being taken. Does this instead show that we've been too honest? Not wily enough? Have we stood our ground and gone for the shot when we could have taken the fall? Perhaps it is now I who is straying too far into supposition.

I note that in 2019/20, 2020/21, and 2021/22 we were joint lowest (or near lowest) in terms of the raw number of pens awarded, and the clubs we shared that position with had, in some instances, a higher level of box shots than we did in such seasons. Now perhaps those teams were subjected to the same unfair treatment that we have received for just one season, but that demonstrates that we are not the only outliers at times. It shows that our correlation in this regard is not unique, nor is it unusual. The unique thing about our situation is its persistence rather than its existence. Still worth investigating, perhaps even more worthy of investigation, but not quite the crazy situation we are assuming it is.

As someone alluded to above, the weird thing isn't that we've flipped a coin and had it land on its edge - it's that this has happened 3 or 4 times in a row.

One team I'd look at here are Huddersfield. Bar 2019/20 they have pretty similar 'box shot' and 'foul' numbers to us in your second table. They have had 6 penalties over the past 96 matches. Double our own number, but still at a frequency well below what appears to be the reasonably expected average of about 4 to 6 penalties per season. Are their fans having similar (exceptionally high quality) discussions as we are? I've not heard their rumblings.

I'm happy to have my mind changed, and ultimately I cannot offer a concrete answer to your final question. What I am trying to do is test the data, ask the questions, and dig beneath the headline figures in an attempt to find the reason beyond "referees hate Bristol City and demonstrate that hatred through the specific denial of penalties".

Ultimately I think we can all agree on two things:

1. on the face of it Bristol City have for a long time been awarded an abnormally low number of penalties;
2. we have imperfect data available to properly analyse why this may have been.

I've not addressed the question around the number of penalties awarded against us. It's a nice quirk, but honestly I find it hard to consider the two issues to be linked. The sport does not require referees to award penalties on a tit-for-tat basis, and the rules of the game say nothing about that. Were we to be awarded 

I mean look, if someone investigates all of this properly (i.e. is paid to do it) and it comes out that we are the sole victims of an elaborate ruse masterminded by the gambling industry, EFL Championship referees then fair play. But also, how stupid do you have to be to make your ruse so bleedingly obvious?

As I said, one for the conspiracy theorists. It would still be interesting to see the data.

Edited August 18, 2022 by The Original OTIB
Spelling

[ExiledAjax]

19 hours ago, GrahamC said:

To partially answer the question I detailed them for last season;

So, just from memory, Scott was brought down in the box at home v Stoke & Forest.

Coventry away (the game we actually got the penalty!), Martin was taken out by their keeper in the first few minutes.

Dasilva was brought down at Fulham when the score was 2-2 in the 6-2 defeat.

Semenyo had a good shout & HNM did too at Preston.

I’m sure there are others that someone else can recall.

This season Atkinson both at Hull & last night were stonewall, Conway looked to have a case at Wigan.

I accept there have been spells latterly under Holden & Pearson’s time after in that same season when we were offensively weak, but not all of the last 4 years & certainly not since Semenyo got back in the side.

@Olé just looking again at fouls and shots and my point on honesty. Where is Weimann in the above list? He's been almost ever present on the pitch (bar 2020/21 when he played just 7 games), and has presumably been our top scorer and top shot-in-the-box taker over the period in question. So why doesn't he feature in Graham's list? If he's in the box, in our attack, and taking shots, why hasn't he got a single penalty claim to his name?

Perhaps he's part of the conspiracy? Or perhaps he's too much of a professional to go down, and instead persists, gets his shot away, and avoids being fouled?

[Olé]

50 minutes ago, ExiledAjax said:

One team I'd look at here are Huddersfield.

While you're busy looking at teams (you must miss the beach!!) have a look at Forest, Blackburn, and of course Preston.

Until Forest's promotion season we could reasonably say all these teams (and ourselves) were lower mid table also rans.

Yet to the extent that a) propensity for being fouled + b) taking shots in the box MIGHT have some link to penalty awards:

Isn't it odd we're consistently awarded below our ranking on those factors, while those 3 are consistently over their rank.

Preston's case in 19/20 was widely remarked on (@GrahamC called it out - they even had 2 against us up there in 2019).

#1 for penalties awarded 19/20 when only 16th most fouled and average attack. 5th most in 20/21 while tamest for both!

It's bizarre. No conspiracy, but just a good (literally) old fashioned question: do wholesome, historic clubs get more love?

 

[Kodjias Wrist]

These stats makes Weimanns goals tally, including all of our forwards look even more impressive! 

[chinapig]

4 minutes ago, Olé said:

It's bizarre. No conspiracy, but just a good (literally) old fashioned question: do wholesome, historic clubs get more love?

I suppose there's a non-zero but vanishingly small chance that referees have talked about our complaints and agreed they are going to double down on refusing us penalties because they don't like being criticised but I agree, not a conspiracy.

You can't rule out certain clubs being favoured but again can't prove it and naturally referees would deny. In Preston's case they were just masters of all kinds of cheating as everybody could see except match officials who in general are remarkably naive about that stuff.

So I return to my earlier suggestion that we should present PGMOL with a systematic analysis and ask them to explain. Otherwise they will just hide behind their version of VAR, i.e. a review of the incidents that happens 2 weeks after the game, and no consequences for the officials concerned.

[BCFC101]

Great work @Olé, thanks for sharing that, some interesting points there and perhaps not what was expected. 

I wonder if in the absence of a stat for box entries we could look at how many of those shots from the box have come directly from crosses (what would be even better is if there was a stat for how many of those shots were on first contact by the player that took the shot). My theory here being that, from subjective memory, we have over the last few years been a team that has favoured getting the ball out wide and getting in as many crosses as we possibly can, more so than other teams, and of course some of these crosses lead to shots. If the proportion of those shots coming from crosses is high, then we could argue that the link between shots taken and penalties given is broken because a cross is less likely to lead to a penalty than a dribble is.

While I'm thinking about this, it would actually be really interesting to see a stat on crosses in comparison to other teams generally, not just those that lead to shots but all crosses. This still won't be perfect and would be a stronger data point if there was a statistic for what proportion of all of a team's attacks involve a cross, but even without that if we were to find that we've generally attempted more crosses per match than other teams, then we could say that this likely (though not definitely) means less dribbles into the box compared to other teams, and therefore less opportunity for penalties to be given.