New man in charge of Clarets

He’s in his fourth season on the Football League list and until now has avoided the Clarets but he has taken charge of one Palace game previously. That was towards the end of the 2003/04 season against Wigan at a time when Palace were moving towards the play offs and Wigan were faltering. It ended 1-1 but Thorpe handed out two yellow cards and sent off Wigan’s Jason Jarrett and Jason Roberts off in stoppage time.

This season, in ten games, he has sent off just one player and that was QPR’s Tom Doherty in their 1-0 home win against Luton, and he had no option after what was a bad challenge. To add to that sending off there have been just 20 yellow cards, and in three of the games there have been no cards at all. For the record 11 of those cards have gone to home players and 9 to away players.

The assistant referees will be Simon Beck (Essex) and Tim Howes (Norfolk) whilst the fourth official duties will be carried out by Steve Rubery (Essex).