Bankes’ second Burnley match of the season- Opinion

Peter Bankes will referee our home game this afternoon against Crystal Palace and it will be the second occasion he’s refereed both clubs this season.

On Saturday, 26^th August he refereed Palace’s 1-1 draw at Brentford and on 3^rd October he was in the middle for our only Premier League victory to date at Luton.

This will be the ninth time he’s refereed Burnley in total, a series of games which started with our away win at Rotherham in 2015. The Luton game was his fourth in the Premier League, the first of which was today’s fixture back in the 2019/20 season when Palace beat us 2-0 at the Turf.

He hasn’t fared well in Burnley games to date and can be found in 16^th place in Rate The Ref with a rating of just 48.21. Only Darren England and Jarred Gillett sit below him.

That Brentford v Palace game this season was card free but in his other six games he’s totalled no fewer than 42 yellow cards along with one red card. In the one game he refereed after that Palace game and before he refereed us at Luton, he was throwing cards around like no business in the Spurs v Sheffield United game, twelve yellows and one red which left Blades’ boss Paul Heckingbottom launching an attack on the standard of refereeing.

In those games with cards, eighteen of the yellows have gone to home team players and twenty-four to away team players. The one player to have seen red is Oli McBurnie who was sent off in the 114^th minute of the game.

His last game came on Monday this week when he refereed the Championship game between Coventry and West Brom, a game won 2-0 by West Brom. It was Bankes’ first Football League game since March. Coventry had both Milan van Ewijk and Liam Kitching carded and they were joined by West Brom’s Nathaniel Chalobah, Cédric Kipré, Kyle Bartley, Okay Yokuslu, Erik Pieters and Matt Phillips.

The fourth official today is Tom Nield whose one Burnley game was our 0-0 FA Cup draw at Ipswich last season. In the VAR hub is Paul Tierney. He hasn’t refereed us since our last Premier League season when he kept getting our key away games; he refereed five of our nineteen away games that season. The last of them was the 1-1 draw at Aston Villa when some big decisions went against us.

Match Officials

Referee: Peter Bankes
Assistant Referees: Eddie Smart & Nick Greenhalgh
Fourth Official: Tom Nield
VAR: Paul Tierney
Assistant VAR: Natalie Aspinall

Previous Burnley Games – Peter Bankes