By Mark Rivlin

I wonder if the Association of Football Statisticians have an anorak out there looking at the number of times poor decisions by referees even themselves out over a season. They may have been beaten to it. Academics from the University of Bath (not early Bath) have left wives and girlfriends to fix the bookshelf in the living room while they study the stats of thousands of Premiership matches and have reached a conclusion that may not surprise any fans – refs’ decisions favour the home side.

The Royal Statistical Society (no less) looked at more than 2,000 games and found that visiting players are more likely to receive yellow and red cards.

In typical managerial speak (slightly more refined than your average Steve Bruce after-match press conference), The Guardian quotes Dr Peter Dawson, a lecturer in economics at the University of Bath: "Managers have been right to highlight inconsistencies and controversial decisions in games, but without a proper analysis of refereeing decisions over a period of time, their comments look like the usual post-match gripe, especially if they are on the losing side.

“The evidence ... provides a firm factual foundation that will help football's authorities debate what positive action they might take to ensure fair and equitable refereeing of matches."

Fans who keep their fingers on the pulse will remember that visiting teams were awarded only three penalties in 10 years at Old Trafford and they were all missed. And the Bath survey was given a firm red card by former man in black Jeff Winter, author of "Who's the B*****d in the Black?", who said: “It does not need a university graduate to work out that home teams usually do best."

So our old pal, moaning Jose Mourinho’s criticism of Graham Poll on Sunday merely backs up the Bath study. It wasn’t as if the the Good Lord himself had decreed that Chelsea should lose. And let’s face it, Sir Alex Ferguson is known to have the odd tantrum about referees' decisions and Arsene Wenger could have been an understudy to the lugubrious Schultz from the 1960s Hogan's Heroes comedy series as he never seems to have seen anything untoward that his players may have done wrong.

But I can see Winter’s point. Like so many academic surveys these days, the Bath people are surely wasting their energy and our money stating the bleedin' obvious. I’d be surprised if home teams didn’t get more decisions in their favour. After all, with 30,000-plus fans screaming that they were either born out of wedlock or spend all day in self indulgence, it is hardly surprising they give the home fans something to cheer about.

Actually, in this country, we have been remarkably free from corruption in the referees department, and I think that on the whole we have a good standard of officiating. Football is played at a fast and furious pace in the Premiership and it is not surprising that refs get it wrong from time to time. How easy for the pundits in their studios on the gantries and in the pubs to watch replays from five angles with crisp white lines drawn to confirm if an offside was valid and then tell us that the referee or his assistant was useless and that the decision has cost a team promotion or relegation.

And it doesn’t help when the BBC's Alan Green rants and raves about referees during commentary and while hosting phone-ins. The refs are on a hiding to nothing. A tasty challenge involving John Terry and Wayne Rooney can be viewed in two ways, depending on how the fans of the respective clubs see it. Over a season, decisions will inevitably even themselves out and part of the actuarial task of setting match odds involves factoring in the advantages of playing at home. When I last looked at the football fixtures, all teams play an equal number of home and away games so chill out, you’ll get some poor decisions one week and good ones the next. And sleep well in the knowledge that it is almost unheard of for refs to throw games in this country (unlike other countries not a million miles away), and that despite the enormous pressure on refs, they do a very good job.