Everybody's favourite game wrecker returns to W12 on Saturday for the London derby between QPR and Charlton.

Queens Park Rangers v Charlton Athletic
Referee – Trevor Kettle (Berkshire)
Assistants – Magill (Essex) and Malone (Wiltshire)
Fourth Official – Laver (Hampshire)

I particularly enjoyed the Barnsley v Hull game on Tuesday night. Not only was it a very entertaining game with some flashes of real quality rarely seen in a Championship match but it was also refereed very well by a 25 year old, Stuart Attwell. It’s easy to see why he’s made it so far so quickly – he refeered the game with a lot of common sense, allowed the play to flow and kept the cards in his pocket. This is what supporters and players want from their officials and it’s good to see the league promoting these values in its young referees.

Sadly, we’re in for the exact polar opposite at Loftus Road this Saturday. The most card happy, picky and fussy referee in the football league, Trevor Kettle, is down for our match with Charlton. This guy had me literally tearing my hair out at Preston earlier this season and he has a history with QPR on a similar level to Andy Hall and Rob Styles. For a neutral spectator, or somebody who wants a bit of entertainment for their £25, this guy is your absolute worst nightmare. He just can’t help himself. Every piece of physical contact is a foul, every foul is a card. He never has the whistle out of his mouth, never has the card out of his hand. He’s a terrible, terrible referee.

Lets have a look at his stats. So far this season he has shown 136 yellow cards (four a game) and six reds in 34 games. He has shown 24 yellows and a red in his last five games alone, including six yellows and a red in the Barnet v Peterborough game and seven yellows in Sheff Utd v Coventry. It was obviously a tough Christmas in the Kettle household has well – during five matches in December he showed 37 yellows and a red, never showing less than seven cards in a game. This is refereeing of the worst kind – a card when a quite word will do. Last season he showed 144 yellows (3.6 a game) and nine reds in 40 matches. These averages are stupidly high.

This isn’t Trev’s first QPR game this season either – he showed his customary seven yellow cards in our 0-0 draw at Preston earlier this season, a game in which he and his equally incompetent linesman awarded Preston a penalty which Lee Camp saved. A rating of three out of ten has him third bottom of the referee league.

Referee Trevor Kettle (Rutland) 3 - Neutral fans may as well not bother going to games when this guy is in charge. If you could bring together eleven of the greatest Brazilian players of all time in their prime and eleven of the greatest Argentinean players of all time in their prime he would still turn a game between the two into a stop start load of old rubbish and bore the tits off you. The whistle is never out of his mouth. Everything is a foul. Every aerial challenge between two players trying to win a header is a foul. Every coming together on the ground is a foul. Every shoulder push is a foul. Every piece of physical contact is a foul. Every foul is a card - seven yellow cards in this one and really only Mawene and Stewart deserved them. Seven yellow cards in a game with two fouls. Whistle, whistle, whistle, whistle, whistle until you just can't stand it any more. To make matters worse still he was assisted by an abysmal linesman who gave some quite perplexing decisions in favour of Preston on the night. I hate this referee simply because I know however much I've paid to get in will be a waste. If he'd been in charge of Liverpool 4 Newcastle 3 it would have finished 0-0. LFW Preston Match Report

Last season he did even worse, bottom of the referee league with an average rating of just 1.5 out of ten from two abysmal performances in the Stoke and Southampton fixtures. On the final day of last season he booked eight QPR players and sent off Sammy Timoska in one of the most ridiculous displays of refereeing I’ve ever seen.

Referee: T Kettle (Berkshire) 2 - Incompetence of the worst kind because it only affected one of the teams. Incompetence that goes against both sides is forgivable because referees are only human but the goal that was and the goal that wasn't were a disgrace to the refereeing profession. How can there be any justification for that decision? All we ask for is consistency. This useless idiot probably couldn't even spell the word. Scandalous. LFW Southampton Match Report

Referee: T Kettle (Berkshire) 1 - A quite astonishing display of refereeing. Mr Kettle, people have not paid £28 to watch you handing out cards. Put your ego away and do try and let the game flow. Of the eleven cards shown I'd say six or seven of them could have been dealt with by having a quiet word on the run or just calming things down. Booked early for very little to put himself under pressure and then just spiralled out of control. QPR of course get fined now by the authorities - there should only be one party being punished after this shower and it certainly isn't our club. A staggering level of incompetence from him for the second time this season. Unbelievably bad. LFW Stoke Match Report

I could go on. Back in our League One says Ian Holloway branded Kettle “Trigger Arm” after a typically eccentric five yellows and one red performance during a 0-0 draw at Peterborough. Basically it’s a strap yourself in and hope he’s in a good mood message for this Saturday.

Elsewhere four elite list officials have been drafted in for big Championship matches this weekend. Mark Halsey at Barnsley v Leicester and Howard Webb at Watford v Palace look like sensible appointments to me but Mike Riley at Stoke v Bristol City and Phil Dowd at Sheff Utd v Hull appear to be recipes for disaster. Kevin Friend, fresh from a typically home orientated performance at Sheff Wed v Plymouth on Monday, has Bury v Macclesfield.

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