| Howard Webb hasn't refereed a game since he took charge of Portsmouth's win at Wolves seven weeks ago but is back in action tomorrow when he makes his first appearance at Turf Moor in six years for the game against Aston Villa. |
Webb, from Rotherham and our referee at next year's World Cup, has been in South Africa as part of the preparations for the finals which has meant no action in the middle since the first Saturday in October.
As our choice for the World Cup it means he is considered to be our best referee, but you wouldn't think so if it was based on his limited performances in Burnley games over the years.
He got off to a shocker in the home game against Millwall in 2002/03 season and in the following season turned in a horror show when allowing Dennis Wise to take charge of refereeing duties as we went out of the FA Cup at the Den.
No one there will ever quite understand how Wise stayed on the pitch for ninety minutes, a situation made even worse by the ridiculous sending off of Paul Weller.
He presided over our next FA Cup exit at Ewood Park in the following year and in his last Burnley game, in March 2008, gave an astonishing stoppage time penalty to Stoke which allowed them to equalise via the post and the back of Gabor Kiraly's head.
But he is our top official and you can only assume that he doesn't make quite so many big mistakes generally.
His games have been limited this season because of the World Cup and to date he's refereed just six Premier League games and one Carling Cup tie in domestic football and they include one previous Aston Villa game, their 1-0 win in the Birmingham derby at St. Andrew's.
In those seven games there have been no red cards and eighteen yellow cards. Of those cards, seven have gone to home team players and eleven to away team players.
The assistant referees tomorrow are Darren Cann (Norfolk) and Peter Kirkup (Northamptonshire). The fourth official is Football League referee Anthony Taylor (Wythenshawe) who refereed our 3-2 win against Sheffield United at Bramall Lane last season. Previous Burnley games: Season | Opps | V | Res | Y | R | Burnley players carded | a | | | | | | | 2002/03 | Millwall | h | 2-2 | 2 | 0 | Gnohere | 2003/04 | Cardiff | h | 1-1 | 2 | 0 | West | 2003/04 | Millwall | a | 0-1 | 4 | 1 | Grant Wood Weller(R) | 2004/05 | Blackburn | a | 1-2 | 3 | 0 | Cahill Grant | 2006/07 | Leicester | a | 1-0 | 4 | 0 | Hyde Sinclair | 2007/08 | Stoke | a | 1-1 | 5 | 0 | Harley Lafferty |
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