Fast tracked Premier League referee Sam Allison will take charge of QPR at Loftus Road for the second time this Saturday as Ipswich visit West London.

Referee >>> Sam Allison (Trowbridge)

Assistants >>> Hristo Karaivanov (Sutton-in-Ashfield) and Jonathan Bickerdike (West Riding)

Fourth Official >>> Callum Walchester (Lowestoft)

History

QPR 0 Sheff Wed 2, Saturday January 25, 2025, Championship

There was some post-match discussion from the manager about the eclectic performance of referee Sam Allison, who’d had a controversial week with a bizarrely disallowed goal in the Derby Sunderland game and came up with some weird and wonderful calls here. Ordering Beadle to move a goal kick 20 yards down the field before the fourth official staged an intervention was probably the pick, but Ilias Chair and Paul Smyth seeing yellow while a deliberate take out on Smyth as he burst into the penalty area, and another nasty crack through the back of Sam Field by the dugouts to deliberately interrupt another counter attack, warrant only a talking to is just absolutely perverse.

The idea of getting more former pros like Allison into refereeing is so we get officials with a better feel for the game who aren’t going to buy into all the dark arts and tricks footballers use to con free kicks, deliberately interrupt play, and clock run. Here Allison exacerbated all of that, rather than cure it. Players half a yard off the touchline, sitting down to stop the play, being allowed treatment on the field rather than being told to move a couple of feet to the right so we can get on with it. YES, GET ON WITH IT. Paterson himself allowed to sit down with nothing wrong, summon the physios to run the clock, walk off at his own pace, and then sprint back on literally seconds before he scored the second goal. Modern football is a bag of wank no.356 in the series.

QPR: Nardi 6; Dunne 6, Edwards 6, Fox 6, Paal 5; Field 5, Varane 6 (Colback 70, 6), Morgan 5 (Kolli 74, 5); Smyth 6, Chair 5 (Saito 70, 5), Frey 5 (Lloyd 70, 5)

Subs not used: Ashby, Cook, Morrison, Madsen, Walsh

Yellow Cards: Chair 46 (foul), Smyth 68 (foul)

Sheff Wed: Beadle 6; Valery 6, Ihiekwe 7, Bernard 7, Lowe 6; Paterson 8, Charles 7, Bannan 8 (Palmer 90+4, -), Gassama 6 (Otegbayo 90, -); Lowe 6 (Smith 66, 7), Windass 6

Subs not used: Charles, Ingelsson, Johnson, Palmer, Ugbo, Valentin

Goals: Smith 72 (assisted Bannon), Paterson 88 (assisted Charles)

Yellow Cards: Valery 80 (foul)

Referee – Sam Allison (Trowbridge) 5 Not as egregiously bad as has been made out, but still not the best of adverts for the oft-cited theory that we need more ex-pros to become referees. You’d expect somebody who has played the game himself to be wise to the dark arts footballers get up to, and yet he fell for every trick in the book right down to Paterson sitting down to stop the game with nothing wrong with him only to then go sprinting off to the other end to score the second goal barely a minute later. Booked Chair for a flailing arm on Paterson, who made a lot of it, straight after half time, and Smyth for interrupting a counterattack, which I don’t have many complaints about. Yet Smyth running into the area and being taken out a yard or so outside the box didn’t bring a yellow card and nor did a nasty smash through the back of Sam Field right in front of the dug outs on 52 minutes. Yellow cards every day of the week and twice Sunday. Then there was the bizarre minute or so where he seemed to be insisting Beadle took his goal kick ten yards outside the box only to be talked out of it either by the linesman or the fourth official at the opposite end, both of whom were 80 yards away from the whole thing. All in all, a bit weird.

Swansea 0 QPR 1, Monday April 1, 2024, Championship

To start the second half Cifuentes experimented with removing a midfielder and adding a second striker in Sinclair Armstrong. Well, we’ve all put a Mento in a bottle of Coke when we were young I suppose. The resulting geyser spewed out a cross for Jerry Yates at the back post (put off just enough by a robust airborne challenge from Fox which I was surprised didn't yield louder penalty appeals to excellent referee Sam Allison), an inopportune slip by Jack Colback and enormous recovery challenge by the excellent Jake Clarke-Salter, and a free kick lifted over the top of the wall and off the face of the crossbar by Matt Grimes.

Swansea: Rushworth 6; Key 7, Darling 6, Wood 7, Tymon 7; Grimes 6, Allen 5 (Fulton 35, 6); Ronald 6 (Govea 84, -), Cooper 5 (Walsh 68, 5), Lowe 5 (Paterson 67, 5); Yates 4 (Cullen 67, 5)

Subs not used: Fisher, Cabango, Patino, Abdulai

QPR: Begovic 7; Dunne 7, Cook 8, Clarke-Salter 8, Fox 7; Colback 6 (Hayden 58, 6), Field 7; Smyth 6 (Frey 81, -), Hodge 5 (Armstrong 46, 6), Chair 6 (Willock 74, 6); Dykes 5 (Andersen 58, 7)

Subs not used: Dixon-Bonner, Cannon, Larkeche, Walsh

Goals: Cook 71 (assisted Dunne)

Referee – Sam Allison (Trowbridge) 8 How to referee a football match.

Stats

Allison is a fire fighter and former footballer with Swindon, Bristol City and Exeter who became just the second ever black referee in the top flight, following the late Uriah Rennie, when he joined the list the season before last. Further reading here and here.

Allison joined the League One and Two list in 2020/21 starting off with 102 yellows and one red in 35 games, followed by 126 and seven in 31 games the year after. His first Championship games came in 2022/23 when he finished up with 119 yellows and four reds in 35 games and he’s part of a select group of younger officials being fast tracked through to try and freshen up the Premier League list with Luton’s 3-2 win at Sheff Utd and 4-3 loss at Bournemouth his first two games at that level.

In 20223/24 he finished up on a very steady 125 yellows (3.6) and one red from 34 games. That was easily led by eight yellows and a red at Leicester v Watford. Last season he booked 132 (4.2) and sent two off in 32 games. He did just the two Premier league games, and they were both with Ipswich – a 4-1 loss away at Man City and 1-1 at Southampton, with eight yellows in the latter game his biggest haul.

This season just the four games, two in the Championship, none upstairs, 18 yellows and no reds.

QPR have a win and a loss from two meetings with this official, Ipswich are 2-3-1 from six.

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Pictures - Reuters Connect

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