Rob Shoebridge, the referee who failed to award Crystal Palace a goal at Bristol City earlier this season because he and both his assistants missed it hitting the back of the net, is the referee for QPR's trip to Newcastle tonight.

Newcastle v QPR
Referee – Rob Shoebridge (Derbyshire)
Assistants – Clark (Northumberland) and Metcalfe (Lancashire)
Fourth Official – Khatib (Tyne and Wear)

QPR players through on goal on Wednesday night may want to make doubly sure any subsequent shots have hit the back of the net with Derbyshire official Rob Shoebridge in charge. He will probably forever be remembered for his unbelievable gaffe in this season’s Bristol City v Crystal Palace match where he missed a perfectly good goal from Freddy Sears hitting the net and waved play on. Palace eventually lost the game 1-0.

A similar thing happened last season with our old mate Stuart Attwell awarding a goal to Reading at Watford even though the ball had not been within four yards of the goal at any stage. The league’s reaction was to throw Attwell straight back into the action and keep him there for the rest of the season despite a series of horrendous performances, not least his horrendous handling of the Derby v Forest derby game.

Shoebridge has returned to action pretty swiftly as well. He has already had four games since then, booking 11 taking his season’s tally to 18 yellows (2.571 a game) and no reds in seven games. Last season he showed 65 yellows (1.911 a game) and four reds in 34 games which is a very low average. One of those 34 games was our 1-0 win at Norwich where we played the entire second half with ten men after Shoebridge, probably correctly, had sent Matt Connolly off for two quick fire bookings before half time. He was also in charge for our 2-1 defeat at Barnsley in February and his average mark of five out of ten placed him 25th on the referee league.

Referee: Rob Shoebridge (Derbyshire) 3 Eccentric. The two things he got right were the big decisions on the night – the QPR goal and the Connolly sending off. Rangers can have few arguments with the latter while Norwich have only themselves to blame for the former. Apart from that though he gave some truly perplexing stuff, handed out cards inconsistently, added only three minutes to the second half when QPR could have had few complaints with six or more, corners when they were goal kicks, throw ins the wrong way, bizarre free kick decisions including one where Damien Delaney tripped over his own feet and saw a free kick awarded to Norwich. Ably assisted by two of the worst linesman I’ve ever seen in my life. The three of them were a circus act at times. LFW Norwich match report

Referee: Rob Shoebridge (Derbyshire) 7 Barnsley seemed to be pretty irate that he kept his cards in his pocket on a few occasions but for me the only mistake he made was not sending Stewart off for chinning De Silva. Played good advantage throughout, was lenient with the players and allowed them to get on with it. Much better than last time I saw him against Norwich.LFW Barnsley match report

Looking further ahead experienced referee Keith Hill is in charge of our trip to Swansea on Saturday. More on him later in the week.

Photo: Action Images

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