Each week, the Premier League’s Key Match Incident (KMI) Panel reviews significant decisions involving goals, penalties, red cards and other major incidents.
Premier League clubs established the KMI Panel in 2022 so that refereeing performance statistics would be assessed independently of the refereeing organisation.
The panel does not examine incidents solely from the perspective of supporters or managers. Its assessments are based on the laws of football and, importantly, the refereeing standards set for Premier League matches.
For this reason, the number of mistakes it identifies may be lower than many supporters anticipate.
The KMI Panel initially assesses the ruling made by the on-field officials before reviewing the actions of the VAR.
Because VAR can only step in when an error is clear and obvious, the panel may conclude that the referee made the wrong decision while also deciding that VAR was right not to intervene.
One example would be a referee awarding a penalty that many observers consider incorrect, although they can still understand the reasoning behind it. The ruling may therefore be judged wrong on the field without meeting the threshold required for VAR intervention.
The KMI Panel also reviews incidents in which a second yellow card should have been issued but was missed, as well as cases where one was wrongly shown.
Its conclusions are published one week after each meeting ends, usually around 10 days after the final fixture of the relevant round.
These assessments are also used for several additional purposes.
Every incident receives a difficulty rating, and the resulting scores contribute to the merit rankings for Premier League referees.
This effectively produces a performance table that helps determine salary bonuses for referees. Officials near the bottom of the rankings receive only a small supplementary payment.
The panel’s conclusions can also highlight subjects requiring further debate, including this season’s less strict interpretation of red-card offences involving hair-pulling.
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