Football Manager stats are always much talked about every year when the latest version of the game is released, but it's usually exclusively the players' stats that are discussed, debated, and argued to no end.
Even Sky Sports News are using Football Manager's stats when discussing transfer news, such is the extent of the depth they go to in their scouting, but having played various iterations of the game for over a decade, I never knew that referees had their own unique stats as well.
The information is not readily available to Football Manager players, but a reddit user was recently messing about with the FM Editor, which allows gamers to change players stats among other things, and he discovered exactly what areas each referee is graded in:
It's very interesting to see that refs even have a current and potential level of ability which determines their accuracy in terms of decision making.
This 'Time Keeping' and 'Line Running' stats also confirm what I've known to be true all along, in that offside decisions can be wrong, and the match always seems to be blown up early when you're chasing a lead.
So there you have it, next time a ref sends you into a fit of rage on FM, keep mind of who it was and expect a similar situation next time you get them.
