Stroud is still on card duty

I referred to Stroud, from Hampshire, back in February as the card man of English football. Ahead of that Millwall game he'd already yellow carded 113 players and sent off seven in 25 games.

He had a quietish day at Burnley with Danny Ings and two Millwall players, Ed Upson and Paul Robinson, yellow carded, but he's been gathering them again since and has now reached 153 yellow cards in 35 although he hasn't added to his red card collection.

68 of those yellow cards have gone to home team players with 85 to away team players and since that Burnley game in February he's carded a minimum of three players in each game apart from a League One fixture between Bradford City and Walsall where there was just one yellow card.

He's twice sent off Burnley players. Steven Caldwell was the first of them in the Carling Cup tie at Chelsea and in the 2010/11 season he dismissed Clarke Carlisle early in the 1-1 draw at Millwall, a decision that he got very much wrong after Carlisle had slipped.

Even so, he's got a RATE THE REF rating of 68.45 out of 100 in his previous Burnley games which sees him in 24th place.

That dismissal of Caldwell came during a period when he'd been promoted to the Premier League. He got his first game at the top level when he refereed Middlesbrough v Manchester City in March 2007 but it wasn't a long spell at the top and Middlesbrough's away game at Fulham in December 2008 proved to be his last Premier League game.

I wrote just those few weeks ago, ahead of the Millwall game, that we could probably expect a decent performance from him but that we could expect some cards. I think the same applies now for a referee who is almost 20 cards ahead of Phil Dowd, the second highest in terms of cards this season.

The assistant referees tomorrow are Marvyn Amphlett (Worcestershire) and Glen Hart (County Durham). The fourth official is Paul Hodskinson (Lancashire).

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