Prem ref Foy in charge of Reading v QPR
Friday, 24th Oct 2008 11:00

Elite list official Chris Foy is the man in the middle as QPR prepare to face Reading at the Madejski Stadium.

Reading v Queens Park Rangers
Referee: Chris Foy (St Helens)
Assistants – Bryan (Lincolnshire) and Yerby (Kent)
Fourth Official – Beeby (Northamptonshire)

One of my pet hates in football is smug commentators who lambast linesmen for decisions after seeing a super slow motion replay. In the Man Utd v Celtic game on Tuesday and the Liverpool match in Madrid on Wednesday there were tight calls made by linesmen that turned out to be wrong, four of them in fact. Three goals were allowed and one was chalked off when it should have been the other way around.

However on all four occasions the commentators saw absolutely nothing wrong with the decision at normal speed, certainly Clive Tyldesley was too busy mopping up the mess he’d made of his trousers when Berbatov scored to even suggest he might have been offside. Then suddenly a side on replay is shown, slowed down to frame by frame, and it shows that Berbatov, and later Robbie Keane, is offside and suddenly Tyldesley and Andy Gray are launching a stinging attack on the linesmen involved.

“I think this one is going to be tight as well, let’s have a look at the replay,” said Gray later in the Liverpool match. It turned out the lino was wrong again, he did have a bit of a mare to be fair, but Gray didn’t know whether he was right or wrong until somebody cued up a replay for him. The linesmen don’t have that luxury and they get them right more than they get them wrong I think.

This Saturday we have Premiership referee Chris ‘penalty’ Foy in charge for our televised trip to Reading. He loves a spot kick does Chris, whether there’s been a foul or not, and awarded QPR one in his last encounter with us – a 4-2 win at Watford last Christmas. In fairness to him that one was fairly blatant.

Referee - Chris Foy (St Helens) 7 - Refereed the game calmly and sensibly, though a couple of the cards were harsh and once or twice he awarded Watford soft free kicks but overall he allowed the game to flow as best he could and got the big decisions right. Pretty decent all in all. LFW`Watford Match Report

That mark of seven good enough for joint fifth position on the referee league. So far this season Foy has shown 33 yellows (4.125 a game) and no reds in eight matches. This is only his second Championship match of the season, the previous was Derby v Sheffield United where he infamously awarded a penalty only to be told by the linesman to change his mind and award a corner. The rest of his games have been in the Premiership apart from Newcastle v Spurs in the League Cup. His biggest haul of cards this season in a single match is six in the Middlesbrough v West Brom and Sunderland v Man City games – Match of the Day viewers may recall he turned in one of the worst refereeing performances in living memory at the Stadium of Light that day.

Last season Foy showed 116 yellows (3.135 a game) and six reds in 37 games, including four yellows in that QPR win at Watford. He refereed one Reading match in the Premier League last season – a 2-0 home defeat by Fulham and we’d certainly take a similar result to that on Saturday. Only one yellow card was shown that day, to Fulham’ Paul Stalteri. His biggest haul was seven yellows in the Fulham v Birmingham game at the end of last season although he did show four yellows and two reds at Aston Villa v Portsmouth earlier in the campaign.

In 2006/07 Foy was in charge for QPR’s home match against Wolves that the R’s lost 1-0. Two Wolves players were booked but none from QPR, a mark of five good enough for joint 16th on the referee league. Referee: C Foy (Merseyside) 5 Overly fussy over the placing of free kicks and throw ins, never played the advantage rule, failed to clamp down on time wasting. All in all an irritating official. LFW Wolves Match Report

For me Foy is a wildly inconsistent official, prone to long bouts of common sense and advantage playing interspersed with crazy penalty decisions and card happy afternoons. As we saw in Sunderland v Man City earlier this season when he has one, he really has one. Expect the unexpected, but expect penalties.

Looking further ahead to Tuesday night and our match with Birmingham is the latest stepping stone on Stuart Attwell’s road to recovery. Attwell, the youngest Premiership referee, awarded the phantom Reading goal at Watford last month and has been out of action ever since. He’s doing Tranmere’s match this weekend before stepping it up a level to the Championship on Tuesday. Nigel Bannister, the blind linesman involved in the incident, is yet to make a return.