Third Burnley game of the season for Ilderton

He's certainly no stranger to us and this will be his 14th Burnley game since he first refereed us back in the 2004/05 season when we beat Nottingham Forest 1-0 with a Robbie Blake penalty, Ilderton's first season as a Football League referee. That set a sort of pattern for him and in subsequent games all of Garreth O'Connor, Jon Harley, Andy Gray, Chris Eagles and Graham Alexander have scored penalties for us that he's awarded.

The last of those penalties, Alexander's against Port Vale in the FA Cup was Grezza's last goal for Burnley and, in five games since, Ilderton has not given us another penalty.

He's twice refereed us at Coventry and twice he's been poor. Other than that there have been no real problems with him although he was the referee who, at Birmingham, was so quick off the draw with a free kick for a foul on Kieran Trippier that he missed Charlie Austin scoring less than three seconds later. At least he apologised to manager Sean Dyche after admitting he'd got it wrong.

Not renowned for over use of his cards, he has reached 84 yellow and four red cards this season in 26 games. It's even with home and away players with 42 of the yellow cards going to both.  All of the red cards have come in lower division games with two in Burton's recent 2-0 home win against Rotherham which left the visitors ending the game with nine men.

His last game came a week last Saturday and was Oxford's 2-1 League Two home win against Port Vale. Both teams had three players yellow carded. For Oxford it was Damian Batt, Josh Parker and Tony Capaldi and for Port Vale all of Daniel Jones, Jennison Myrie-Williams and Doug Loft were yellow carded.

The assistant referees tonight are Duncan Street (West Yorkshire) and Peter Wright (Merseyside). The fourth official is Football League referee Andy Madley (Wakefield) who refereed our Capital One Cup tie against Plymouth this season.

Previous Burnley Games