First and last whistle for Oliver

Last updated : 15 May 2015 By Tony Scholes

He upset Chelsea's manager in that game back in August, yellow carding Diego Costa for diving when some thought he'd been brought down by Tom Heaton and a penalty should have been awarded.

Now aged 30, I'm certain that Oliver has become one of the most improved referees in the country. He was fast tracked to the Premier League, as was Stuart Attwell, and I've said before that I think it came too early for him and there were some horror stories to tell.

In some of his earlier Burnley games he was poor; none more so than the Swansea home game in 2008/09 and the first of his three Burnley games against Blackpool. He didn't have the best of games at Bloomfield Road last season either but much of that went unnoticed as we moved ever closer to promotion.

But there is no doubt that he's now one of our better referees although he's come in for some severe criticism at times from Premier League managers. Back in October, Swansea's Garry Monk called his decision to award Stoke a penalty against his team a disgrace, last month Chelsea were outraged as he denied them three penalties and carded for Cesc Fabregas for diving. And last week Alan Pardew claimed he'd got two big penalty decisions wrong in their home defeat against Man United.

This season he's refereed 31 games domestically with none of them in the Football League. In those games there have been 116 yellow cards and six red cards. Two of those yellow cards have come at Wembley; one in the Community Shield and one in the FA Cup semi-final between Aston Villa and Liverpool, but of the others, 61 have gone to home team players and 53 to away team players.

His last game was the Palace v Man United game last Saturday in which there was just the one yellow card, that going to United's Ander Herrera.

Michael Oliver is currently fifth in RATE THE REF with a rating of 73.42 out of 100 from seven qualifying games.

The assistant referees tomorrow are Stuart Burt (Northamptonshire) and Matthew Wilkes (West Midlands). The fourth official is Paul Tierney (Wigan) who has only once refereed us, that being the FA Cup tie at Barnsley in January 2013 when he wrongly sent off Brian Stock, mistaking him for Michael Duff on the first yellow card.

Previous Burnley Games

Season Opponents V Res Y R Burnley Players Carded
             
2007/08 SCUNTHORPE h 2-0 2 0  
2008/09 PLYMOUTH h 0-0 2 1 n Eagles n Eagles
2008/09 SWANSEA h 0-2 2 1 n Elliott n Duff
2011/12 BLACKPOOL h 3-1 2 0  
2012/13 BLACKPOOL h 1-0 4 0 n Mee, Paterson
2013/14 BLACKPOOL a 1-0 5 0 n Marney, Jones, Duff
2014/15 CHELSEA h 1-3 2 0 n Sordell