Methodology

What gets logged

An incident is one decision in one match: a goal, a penalty, a red card, an offside or a handball. Controversial calls are the priority, but clearly correct calls belong here too, or accuracy can't be measured.

Who is judged, for what

Each incident records two separate calls, because the referee and the VAR room can fail independently:

• Referee call. Was the on-field decision right? This is also used for a referee who rejects correct VAR advice at the monitor.
• VAR call. Did the VAR intervene when they should have, and stay out when they shouldn't? The assistant VAR shares this verdict.

Each call is Correct, Error or Debatable. Debatable calls never count for or against anyone.

Where verdicts come from

In order of authority:

1. KMI panel ruling: the Premier League's Key Match Incidents panel of three former players or coaches, a Premier League representative and a referees'-body representative. From 2026-27 the panel's outcomes for every key incident are published weekly, and we import all of them with their votes.
2. Admitted by referees’ body: PGMOL / Pro Ref publicly acknowledging an error, as it did for the September 2026 Manchester derby.
3. Media consensus · awaiting panel: the verdict of detailed analyses such as ESPN's VAR Review, used until the panel rules. Flagged as provisional throughout the site.
4. Community assessment: a reasoned contributor assessment with sources. It's the lowest weight and should be upgraded when better evidence appears.
5. Awaiting KMI panel: logged from the Premier League's own match data (VAR overturns, penalties, red cards) but not yet ruled on. It doesn't count for or against anyone until the panel's weekly outcomes are published.

How complete each season is

• 2026-27: every match, and every key incident the KMI panel publishes weekly (correct calls included), plus VAR interventions from the Premier League's match data while the panel's ruling is pending.
• 2025-26: all 380 matches with their officials. Every VAR intervention comes from the Premier League's match commentary, and every error comes from the KMI panel's end-of-season list, published by BBC Sport. That list says any decision not on it was voted correct, so interventions not on it are marked correct. Correct on-field calls where VAR didn't get involved weren't published that season, so they aren't logged.
• Earlier seasons: landmark incidents only, for now.

Fan sentiment

For each match we pull the r/soccer post-match thread from the Arctic Shift Reddit archive and read up to 1,500 comments. A comment counts as being about officiating if it mentions the referee, VAR, a penalty, offside, a card or a disallowed goal. It counts as angry if it also uses complaint language and doesn't defend the decision. Comments are weighted by upvotes, so one 400-upvote rant counts for more than ten one-vote replies.

Outrage is the weighted share of the thread that is angry about officiating, scaled 0–100 so roughly 15% of a thread ranting equals a full meltdown. Fans felt wronged is whichever side's flaired fans were clearly angrier. It's a crowd mood reading, not evidence of an error: fans get angry at correct calls too, and the panel's verdict is what the leaderboard uses.

Right on the pitch vs right in the end

The panel judges the on-field call and the VAR's action separately. A wrong on-field call that VAR correctly overturns counts against the official who made it, but the final decision was right, so it doesn't count in the club ledger. A wrong call that VAR left alone, because it wasn't clear and obvious, still stands as an error for the club it went against.

Offside flags are the assistant referee's call. When the panel says the assistant was wrong, the referee isn't charged with it.

Scoring officials

Accuracy is correct calls divided by correct plus wrong calls. Damage score adds up an official's errors, weighted by how much each one affected the match:

“Who benefited” is not “who they support”

Every error helps one club and hurts another, and the site shows those patterns openly. But a handful of errors is far too small a sample to show bias, and officials are not appointed to matches involving clubs they have a declared connection to. Treat a pattern as a question worth asking, not an accusation.

Known gaps

• Coverage is uneven. Big-club incidents are reported more, so they get logged more. The KMI season tables on the clubs page are the fairest league-wide comparison.
• The panel's full per-incident rulings aren't published in one place during the season, so some verdicts wait on later reporting.
• Impact ratings and controversy levels involve judgement. Challenge them in a pull request.