Rookie referee Karl Evans from lancashire is in the middle on Saturday as QPR return to league action with the visit of Barnsley to Loftus Road.
QPR v Barnsley
Referee – Karl Evans (Lancashire)
Assistants – Farries (Oxfordshire) and Smith (Surrey)
Fourth Official – Holderness (Essex)
Do Premiership referees favour Premiership teams in cup competitions? The simple and obvious answer would be no of course, contrary to popular belief and conspiracy I do not believe any referees go out into a game to be deliberately biased - apart from when Andy Hall referees our games of course. However there is no doubt in my mind that Premiership teams do benefit in circumstances such as Wednesday night where Mike Jones was, shall we say, less than fair to QPR at Stamford Bridge.
Some of that was down to plain incompetence - there is no other word for the decision to not even award a free kick to Jay Simpson in the second half when he was crudely hacked down from behind on halfway. There’s no bias or anything else in there, that’s just plain nonsense. However I have a couple of theories as to why in visits to Chelsea, Man Utd and Aston Villa in the last 18 months and in every premiership v lower league match you watch on the television the lesser side finds itself competing against the referee as much as the opposition.
Firstly I would say the referees are more familiar with the Premiership players. That doesn’t apply so much to Jones on Wednesday as he has not had too many Chelsea games but for Dowd at Old Trafford and Mason at Aston Villa they have refereed the home players much more than the QPR ones. They know who is likely to dive, who is likely to stick an early foul in, who is physical, who is just mistiming things and they can act accordingly. They probably don’t know Damion Stewart from Adam and so where they may laugh off an early “feeler” from Vidic as just Vidic being Vidic they may see a similar foul from Stewart as an act of mindless violence worthy of a card.
Secondly I do believe the very top level of the game is refereed to different rules even from our league. Go and watch your local non-league side when you get a chance and marvel at the brutality that doesn’t even warrant a mention from the referee. The lower down you go, the more you get away with. QPR were penalised time and time again on Wednesday night for challenges they would have been allowed to make in the Championship - the most obvious example being Simpson’s shoulder to shoulder effort with Mikel that drew a round of applause from the QPR supporters but a free kick from the referee. No way in a million years would that have been given in a league game at our level. The Premiership teams are used to these rules, the Championship sides are not.
Whether I’m right or wrong in those theories I found Jones’ performance at Stamford Bridge and Mason’s at Aston Villa last year hugely frustrating and worthy of further analysis by the authorities.
Turning our attention towards this weekend against Barnsley and we have another newbie in charge. Karl Evans from lancashire is in his third year on the list but this is only his fourth match of the season. He has only ever done two Championship games although by coincidence one of those was a Barnsley game - a 1-1 draw at Blackpool in 2008. Last season he booked five and sent one off in Nottingham Forest’s 0-0 home draw with Charlton. So far this season he has done three games, two in league Two and one in League One, and showed two yellow cards in each of them. Last season in total he showed 37 yellows (2.3125 a game) and one red in 16 matches which was slightly worse than his average the previous year when he showed 53 yellows (2.038 a match) and three reds in 26 games.
Elsewhere this weekend Premiership referee Keith Stroud has the always feisty derby game between Scunthorpe and Doncaster that has an early kick off at Glanford Park. Another elite level official, Steve Tanner, has dropped down to league One to try and keep control of Orient v Millwall. Andy Hall has Swindon v Wycombe.
Looking further ahead to Wednesday and Rob Shoebridge is our referee for the trip to Newcastle - he of phantom Crystal Palace goal at bristol City infamy. More on him on Tuesday.
Photo courtessy of refworld.com