Moss down from the Premier League to ref Wolves game

He somewhat harshly sent off Eckersley on his Burnley debut at Hartlepool in the League Cup in 2009 but the red cards he showed to Bartley, at Nottingham Forest in 2011, and Michael Duff at West Ham in April of this year were downright wrong decisions, the Duff one being overturned on appeal.

Moss, who is now based in Horsforth although originally from Sunderland, has been refereeing in the Football League since 2005, moving up into the Premier League six years later. That first Football League game for him was at Shrewsbury in August 2005 when the home side were beaten 1-0 by Rochdale in a League Two fixture with Grant Holt scoring the only goal and becoming the first yellow card victim for the new referee.

He got his first Championship game at Preston in the following January but tomorrow will be his first Championship game of the season. He's used almost exclusively in the Premier League these days; last season he was in charge of just one Championship game and then the Brentford v Middlesbrough play-off game. Andre Gray and Jelle Vossen scored in that game but neither were one of the nine yellow players he carded.

This season he's refereed eight games, all of them in the Premier League. There have been 26 yellow cards in those games, just over three per game, with nine of them going to home team players and 17 to away team players.

He's also sent off three players and surprisingly the first of them was a home team player when Carl Jenkinson was red carded in West Ham's 4-3 home defeat against Bournemouth. He's since sent off Norwich's Steven Whittaker in a 3-0 defeat at Southampton and in his last game dismissed Chelsea's Nemanja Matic for two yellow cards as they lost 2-1 at West Ham, providing Jose Mourinho with more opportunities to go into meltdown.

There were six other players yellow carded in that game. Also seeing cards were West Ham's and all of Cheikhou Kouyate, Cesar Azpilcueta, Diego Costa, Cesc Fabregas, Willian and John Obi Mikel for Chelsea.

Jon Moss is the lowest of the Premier League referees in RATE THE REF with a rating of just 53.26 out of 100.

There is always a concern with Moss. Generally he is a referee that away teams struggle with and he's had some shockers with us on the road. Besides the three red card games, he particularly had a shocker at Middlesbrough in 2010 although I'm not holding him responsible in any way for our 4-0 defeat at West Brom last season.

The assistant referees tomorrow are Simon Long (Cornwall) and Scott Oldham (Lancashire). The fourth official is Football League referee Mark Heywood (Cheshire) whose only Burnley game was our 2-0 defeat at Nottingham Forest in December 2012.

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