Patterns of Assistance: The Crawford Allan Coincidences

On Thursday 28^th March the following podcast was recorded on the A Celtic State of Mind platform. You can view it here or listen wherever you consume your pods.

For the fifth written follow-up, I consider the distribution of awards of red cards.

Red Card Differentials

I would expect Celtic and Rangers to broadly receive and benefit from a similar number of red cards over the period under review.

Here is the differential between the number of red cards awarded and conceded:

There appears to be a slight correlation between league position and differential in red cards awarded and conceded as we’d expect.

Yet, by this measure, The Rangers lead the way with a differential of 12 red cards more for their opponents than for themselves. Celtic’s differential is four.

The Rangers Z-Score is -2.07 meaning it is outside the 95^th percentile and therefore statistically significant. No other result falls into this category.

The (Another) Crawford Allan Coincidence

Using data from the Fitba Stats site, we can see the pattern of red cards received by The Rangers since their promotion to the SPFL Premiership in 2016-17.

The early SPFL Premiership version of The Rangers had a real discipline problem. 25 red cards in Europe and SPFL football in three seasons. Ryan Jack was sent off five times, Alfredo Morelos seven times.

Then, suddenly, the same group of players became paragons of virtue. There was no sending’s off at all from 29^th December 2019 to the 18^th of January 2022 when Ryan Kent was red-carded at Aberdeen, in Scottish league matches.

Crawford Allan was appointed Head of Referee Operations on 13^th January 2020. Over two years passed on his watch when a group of previously highly undisciplined players, suddenly were angelic on the field and did not receive a red card.

Remember, both the 44 league match and 75 league match runs without conceding a penalty also occurred on Allan’s watch at the same time.

Remember, in 2020-21 the cry was “Stop the Ten”. In subsequent seasons, European Champions League Group Stage money was on the line.

Sometimes life is just full of coincidence.

Next up: assessing the overall benefit of penalties and red cards and the patterns therein.

Note: all data is correct to 3^rd January 2024.