Tomorrow, Michael Salisbury will become the first referee to take charge of two Burnley games when he takes charge of our game against Sheffield Wednesday at Hillsborough.
Select Group referee Salisbury, from Penwortham, was promoted to the Select Group in 2021 but hasn?t refereed a Premier League game this season. In fact his only league game this season was our 5-0 win against Cardiff, since which he has refereed just the League Trophy game between Huddersfield and Barnsley ten days ago.
Embed from Getty ImagesTomorrow will be his fifth Burnley game. The first of them was our 2-0 home win against Sheffield United at Easter 2023 and last season he was in charge of our home Premier League game against Aston Villa and the League Cup tie at Everton. Those three games and this season?s opening home game have given him a RATE THE REF rating of 57.96 out of a hundred which is just behind three of our recent referees David Webb, James Linington and Gavin Ward.
His last Premier League game was that between Brighton and Chelsea at the end of last season in which he sent off Chelsea?s Reece James nineteen minutes after he?d come on as a substitute.
This season, in those two games, he?s shown seven yellow cards, three to home team players and four to away team players, and been into his pocket once to show a red card to Barnsley?s Donovan Pines in their 2-0 defeat at Huddersfield. They also had Conor McCarthy, Aiden Marsh and Stephen Humphrys yellow carded alongside Huddersfield?s He...