Championship - 2023/24

Probably do them good, Vydra got the top gong in February 2013 and then proceeded not to score for the entire rest of the regular season...

 

They're not going to get relegated because of one result though.

 

No but those 2 stolen points could well affect whether they finish above or below the line and could damage the confidence and morale boost that climbing out of the bottom 3 would have given them.

 

Or the injustice they're feeling could galvanise them and they could rout every opponent in the remaining 4 games?

 

I've just seen the incident and it does look very harsh indeed

 

Maybe, but I never quite get the "it wasn't this game that relegated us" logic that is often applied. Where do you draw the line ? Not looking for an argument but if they need to get a point in their last game and are 1-0 up going into injury time before 2 ridiculous decisions go against them, do they just shrug their shoulders and say well it wasn't those 2 decisions that cost us, it was the other 45 games that put us in this position ? Those 2 points on saturday ,this late in the season could well make the difference between staying up and being relegated.

 

I personally just think it's a negative mindset to get into and I suspect the various managers who often say it think that too. Teams have 46 opportunities to affect their final position over a league season. Where they end up is a product of all of those results and performances and is almost always a fair reflection. I don't quite subscribe to the 'decisions even themselves out over a season' mantra but you don't end up relegated because of one refereeing decision.

 

I agree re the mindset point, but i would disagree in the case of the example I gave above, last minute of last game, I'm not sure too many would shrug their shoulders and believe that THAT decison hadn't caused their relegation. Anyway.... I do think Huddersfield will go down now.

 

They still have Brum to come to them next week, but before that Brum have Rotherham away which you'd think is an away banker. It's Stoke vs Plymouth this weekend, the Steve Schumacher derby, whoever loses that could easily get sucked right back into it, especially with Sheffield Wednesday away to Blackburn on Sunday

 

Well there you go then.

Neither do I.

Maybe they can come close to even over the course of a season, but it's likely that for most teams they won't exactly, give or take at least the odd couple of points. And at this stage of the season with things so tight at the bottom of the table those two points could mean the difference between staying up and going down.

 

If you get relegated it’s never for one thing, it’s culmination of lots of things. All teams will get their slice of good and bad luck over a season, but the main driver for being relegated is never luck, it’s being a poor side. I suspect you also won’t know enough about their other 45 games this season to say that they never benefited from a similar decision going their own way at some point, which you could the apply the same argument to.

 

I don't think the problem is the rule - his arm looks to be tucked in to his body and as such isn't making himself bigger or in an unnatural position - I think the problem was either with the ref's eyesight or them incorrectly applying the rules.

No idea how fair or not it was that the game was in the 9th minute of injury time either.

 

Yes of course you can have good or bad luck in any game of the season but in my example above, if you need to get a point in your last game and are 1-0 up going into injury time before 2 ridiculous decisions go against you, do you just shrug your shoulders and say well it wasn't those 2 decisions that cost us, it was the other 45 games that put us in this position ? I doubt we'd be that calm about it !

 

But if you’re in the position that you could get relegated in your 46th game of the season, then it’s your performance in the prior 45 games that has left you exposed to luck going against you.

 

Of course but have those two incorrect decision just cost you relegation because you'd have otherwise stayed up? Of course they have.

 

Yes but what if you had a similar decision go for you in say, the 12th game of the season? The fact that one went against you in the last game of the season doesn’t make it any more relevant that you getting the rub of the green in any of your other games. The underlying cause is still not being good enough.

 

Well obviously - but that doesn't mean that the side 1 place and 1 point above the drop zone won't also be a poor side who might be as or more deserving of being relegated, but ultimately benefited from 1 less match costing decision. With such fine margins the side more deserving may not end up in exactly the right place.

All teams will of course have luck for and against them over a season, but it is highly unlikely that for every team this will be exactly balanced out come the end of the season with there probably being a couple of points one way or another for a lot of teams. It's true that maybe Huddersfield had benefited somehow earlier in the season, I don't know, but such a costly decision at this stage of the season must seem especially deflating.

 

Well of course not, in the same way if I flipped a coin 10 times now I may well not get 5 heads and 5 tails, how could you ever expect it to be? But the underlying cause of relegation is not one individual decision. If you’ve left yourself exposed to subjective refereeing decision on the last day of the season then that’s your own fault. Even if you’ve had more bad luck than good, you can still apply the same argument in reverse for any good luck you’ve had, surely? If you didnt get X decision Y games ago go for you when it shouldn’t have, then you’d already have been relegated by now anyway.

 

Hypothetically it can be.

Say if you have two teams that pick up exactly the same points over the course of a season and have the same amount of luck for and against them, but on the final day (or near enough) one of them gets one piece of bad luck that costs them the two points which makes them finish below the team who had played equally poorly across the season but didn't have that additional bad decision against them.

But a club like Birmingham have also left themselves exposed to relegation subject to the whims of refereeing decisions - so why is it Huddersfield's fault if they go down, but not Birmingham's fault that they had to rely on a bad refereeing decision in another game to save them when they would have otherwise gone down?

 

But that is never ever going to be the case is it. Where do you draw the line with ‘luck’? You can have one scandalous decision that outright goes against you, but what if in another game you have a lot of smaller decisions go for you that ultimately influence the result? The wrong throw in call here, a card not given there, a corner not give there. Etc etc. You can’t possibly isolate one single decision as the cause without in depth forensic knowledge of each and every other decision that went for and against that team, however big or small. And then aside from all of that, you’ve got player and manager error, did this team miss a penalty like Troy did against Spurs? Did they miss an easy goal like Doucore against Arsenal? Did the manager make the wrong subs at the wrong time and cost them points? Why are one of those single incidents not the cause instead? Why is one specific decision above millions of other choices and decisions the defining one?

 

I can see the argument that teams that get relegated (especially those by the tiniest of margins) can do so by having more misfortune than those that end up just the right side of the line, rather than having less quality, and often it's not just down to one game.

Yes, if you get relegated over a long season and the relegation was at least arguably avoidable (as opposed to, say, us in 1999/00 when we didn't stand a chance without breaking the bank) it's mostly the club's fault for recruiting poorly in the playing and/or managerial department and the fault of the players that were capable of contributing towards the points needed to stay up but made stupid point-costing errors and didn't consistently pull their weight, when competent planning, sustained hard work and the right attitude would have covered those fine margins. But what if you have a season where an exceptional number of points is needed for survival (like it looks like this one is going to be) and where you have not one, or two, but three results going against you? Leicester, who were beating practically everyone until not long ago, losing at Plymouth? Leeds unbeaten at home all season losing at home to a team that were battered 5-0 at midtable Bristol (who needed a dubious 101st penalty just to get a point at home to Huddersfield)? Coventry losing easily at a team who were dire midweek in their home defeat to Cardiff, who had been really solid since O'Hare's return? How do you account for or indeed predict a team beating Leicester 3-1 and then losing 3-0 at 2nd from bottom Brum?

And it's not only that but also how the fixture lists pan out - a relegation rival can be blessed with a kinder run-in, playing a load of midtable or already relegated sides with nothing to play for, which would have got points against other teams at the bottom when it mattered. It's not always one game that can make the difference.

 

Obviously I'm aware that's an unlikely exact scenario - but the point is that it is still likely that one side will have ultimately received a bit more bad luck than another team across the course of a season which can maybe equate to a one or two point swing. Both Brum and Huddersfield are poor teams, but the margin between them as so tight that it's not impossible that refereeing decisions can end up the differentiating factor.

I don't have any info available that will demonstrate exactly which sides will have received more luck than others over the season, maybe Huddersfield had been more lucky than Birmingham in other earlier games, but also maybe they hadn't.

Those are errors made by the team and their manager themselves which cost them points - maybe the two teams near the drop had made a similar amount of such errors? Those can clearly be considered as different from points that were lost at no fault from the team but rather due to the referee gifting the opponent the points with a terrible decision eg awarding a last minute penalty, disallowing a goal which should have stood etc.

 

But what is the difference between a player or a manager making a wrong choice, and a referee? Why is one wrong choice more important than another? There will be countless decisions over the course of a season made by players, managers and officals that will have a direct influence on the result, how can you possibly isolate one specific decision as the defining one?

 

A decision made in the last 10 seconds of the season can determine the outcome of the whole season. A decision made in match 12 doesn't at that point define the season.

A referee making a wrong decision is outside the control of the club.

 

Of course it did, it defined the season by putting the club in question in a position where a decision on the final 10 seconds of the season could send them down.

 

Right, so the decisions of the players and the manager have no bearing on whether you stay up or go down?

 

Are you trolling now or just being dense?!

How many times does it need spelling out to you?!...

Decisions made by players and managers are within the control of the team and are their fault, and distinct from the decisions that can be unfairly made by external forces eg referees.

Hypothetically two teams eg Birmingham and Huddersfield can have been equally poor in the performances of their own manager and players; however one of them may ultimately benefit to the tune of a point or two from having fewer poor and unwarranted decisions made by external referees go against them which makes the difference in keeping them up relative to the other team.

It is difficult to sum up the extent to which this could have exactly happened or not, but the point is that it's possible for such an approximate scenario to be the case.

 

Of course they are in control of the team, but why can a mistake by a player or manager not be singled out as a reason for being relegated? Referring decisions are part of the game, many are subjective, many are wrong to varying degrees. The scenario you highlight would never happen, teams play other teams at different times, with different scores, different referees and different decisions, you can’t pinpoint one decision as the reason for being relegated when a million other decisions across 46 games could’ve also changed the outcome. If you can boil it down to one decision, you can’t ignore everything that also happened across 46 games.

 

Read the full post - "because hypothetically two teams eg Birmingham and Huddersfield can have been equally poor in the performances of their own manager and players".

It is hypothetically feasible that two teams can near enough be equally bad and have made equal amount of mistakes amongst their players and managers to have earned the same amount of points, but the differentiating factor may ultimately be that one has received more unfair refereeing decisions than the other which have decided their results.

And while their may be plenty of minute decisions over the course of games that can make a difference, there will also be some that clearly have a far more disproportionate impact on results than others - eg being unfairly penalised for a free-kick on the half-way line in the first minute of a game is unlikely to have as much of an impact on the outcome of a game as in the 9th minute of injury time having an incorrect penalty given against you when you're in the lead. Such big moments are clear as having directly altered the match result.

 

It’s a hypothetical scenario that would be impossible to ever happen.

 

Of course they do ?!!!
But they are within the clubs control.

 

By careful manipulation of https://www.worldfootball.net/table_calculator/eng-championship/ we can still be relegated.

 

Not at the time it didn’t. There were stacks of games still to go to resolve a situation. Maybe they could still have got promoted at that stage! Whereas an error right at the end of the season with no time to play determines relegation or no relegation with no time to rectify.
I’m really not sure what you’re trying to argue. If it’s that an incorrect decision in game 12 could relegate a club without a chance of reprieve or that a wrong decision in the final seconds of the season couldn’t …. well I’m surprised you’d think that…but shall we leave it at that?