Everyone agrees the referees are biased. So, that got us at Ibrox Noise thinking about a way to visualize how bad current refereeing decisions really are.

In the following chart I have broken down the first four Premiership matches for February. These are not cup finals, or cup qualifiers. Here the intent is to just show how bad or good the referees are on a daily basis:

As you can see I have analysed the refereeing decisions based on six categories. These are getting throw in decisions right, correctly giving a team a goal kick, or Corner, correctly calling offside, and also correctly calling fouls for the team fouled.

If the referee makes the correct call then the bar remains in the center. If the decision badly affects Rangers the bar moves to the left. And if the bad decision adversely affects our opponents, then the bar moves to the right.

Then there are three sections called Questionable Bad Refereeing Decision; Bad Refereeing Decision, and Really Bad Refereeing Decision.

‘Questionable Bad Decisions’, are potential mistakes anyone could reasonably make, given the speed of the event, or the distance the referee was away from the even. Bad decisions are those which make us groan and make us wonder if the referee needs glasses, and the truly awful decisions are the ones that affect, in a major way, the balance of the game. Offside goals being allowed, judo throws on players that result in just a foul being given, when we all know Alfredo Morelos would be given a straight red, and booking the player that was fouled.

Here I have only looked at four matches, and within these four matches I found there were 32 bad decisions made by the four referees. Thirty of these bad decisions adversely affected Rangers, and only two influenced our opponents.

Amongst the two questionable decisions against Rangers the first involved Aribo being blocked in the penalty box at around 38 minutes in the first half of the game against Hamilton.

Here my question is if there was no contact on Aribo then why was there no yellow card given to Aribo for simulation? Here I am using the ‘Alfredo Morelos Test’. As we all know if Morelos falls down he is immediately sent off. So, if the referee does not think it was simulation, then he should award a penalty, but in this case the referee does not give penalty. The second questionable event was Kent being tripped in penalty box in the same match at around the 42 minute mark.

The number of times an opponent handles the ball and no penalty was given happened three times in these four matches, and one time the attacker handled the ball (the match against Kilmarnock), and that resulted in a critical goal against Rangers. This was the same game where Morelos’ goal was disallowed, when he did not touch the defender.

It is amazing how many bad decisions were made in just these four February matches. However, the worrying trend that I have been worried about for months is the growing feeling that the opponents now feel it is ok to physically assault the Rangers Players.

In just these four matches Arfield, Goldson, Edmundson, Davis and Barisic all have had elbows across the face, and only once was a yellow card given.

Here we again know if it was Morelos involved in any of these events, the compliance officer would be immediately reviewing TV footage, and handling out a retroactive ban. Yet there is no trial by TV for any other player.

Then there was the handball just before scoring, and the number of handballs by the opposition defenders that are routinely ignored by the referee.

Again, this is just the data for the last four matches, and the fact that I counted 32 bad decisions made against Rangers and only 2 against the opposition does perhaps give new light into the reason why Rangers have struggled so much since the winter break.