Premiership referee for the Turf

He’s taken charge of just one Burnley game since, our first win of the 2003/04 season at Gillingham which came after three successive defeats.

In neither game has there been anything controversial and that has been the case with most of his Burnley games, although he did send off Glen Little at Cardiff during the promotion season after he kicked out at Richard Carpenter. He had little option although Carpenter surprisingly avoided even a yellow card that day.

Most of his thirty-two games last season were in the Premiership and he averaged just under two yellow cards per game with a total of sixty. He certainly favoured the home sides when it came to yellow cards though with just twenty of them going to home team players and the other forty to away team players.

He sent off just two players. The first of these was Carlo Cudicini in Chelsea’s 1-0 FA Cup defeat at Newcastle and the second was Talal El Karkouri of Charlton as they went down 4-1 at home to West Brom in a Premiership game.

Four times last season he gave out no cards at all in a match whilst his busiest day came in the Premiership game at Old Trafford between Manchester United and Aston Villa. He handed out a total of seven yellow cards, five of them to Villa players as their side was beaten 3-1.

He’s one of our established top referees and I am certain we can expect a much better performance than the one we witnessed at the Alexandra Stadium on Saturday.

The assistant referees tonight are Graeme Atkins (West Yorkshire) and Dave Babski (Lincolnshire) whilst the fourth official duties will be carried out by Jonathan Moss (West Yorkshire).

Moss is new to the Football League list this season and took charge of his first game on Saturday, the League Two game at Gay Meadow between Shrewsbury and Rochdale.

Previous Burnley games: