Taylor to referee third Turf Moor game this season

When he turned up for the Liverpool game on Boxing Day, he'd already refereed 14 games in which he'd issued 60 yellow cards and just the one red card to Arsenal's Calum Chambers at Stoke on what was a controversial day for him when he wrongly disallowed a goal for offside with the assistant referee giving nothing.

Liverpool's Lucas was the only yellow card at the Turf but since he's been very busy, particularly with his red card. In 16 games since he's handed out 68 more yellow cards and another eight red cards, whilst also showing ten yellow cards in the European qualifier between Macedonia and Belarus.

His domestic total, in 31 games is now 129 yellows and nine red cards. Of those yellow cards, 61 have gone to home team players and 68 to away team players.

His most recent game was Manchester City's 2-0 home win against West Brom last Sunday when both teams received two yellow cards, Jesus Navas and Yaya Toure for City and Cheikhou Kouyate and Stewart Downing for West Ham.

He was poor earlier in the season for the Sunderland game and I can certainly recall two awful performances from him at Sheffield United in 2008 and at home against Southampton in 2011.

Besides the goal at Stoke, he's had his moments this season. He ignored the clearest of handballs from Gary Cahill to deny Liverpool a penalty against Chelsea back in November and a month later he found it necessary to apologise to Cesc Fabregas for carding him for diving when he had been fouled by Southampton's Matt Targett.

The 37-year-old from Wythneshawe is currently13th in RATE THE REF with a rating of 62.35 out of 100.

The assistant referees are Gary Beswick (County Durham) and Darren Cann (Norfolk). The fourth official is Football League referee Simon Hooper (Wiltshire) whose last Burnley game was last season's 2-1 home win against Leeds.

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