Our match at home to Wolverhampton Wanderers sees Clive Oliver take charge of this match having taken charge of the same fixture last season. On that occasion he had a good overall game despite failing to give Burnley a penalty early on. On that occasion he issued the yellow card four times with two cautions to each side, McGreal and Ricketts for the Clarets and Rosa and Ross for Wolves.

His only other visit to Turf Moor was in the 2004/05 season for the visit of QPR which ended with a Burnley victory 2-0. On that occasion he had an easy game to control only cautioning Bowditch and Kanyuka; however he was certainly pedantic on some smaller things in which he could have easily let go.

Oliver is not a referee who will look to grab the headline and he is certainly not card happy though, as last season proved, when he averaged well under 3 cautions a game, the most cautions he showed in a league match last season was four. In his thirty league and cup games last season he also only dismissed three players.

This season Oliver has officiated one match in which he only cautioned Nottingham Forest’s Julian Bennett in their 2-0 win away at Blackpool.

Mr Oliver was promoted to the national list of referees in 2004, having been a football league referee since 1998. In 2004 he was the 4th official at the Conference Play-off final and in 2003 he was the referee at the Unibond League Cup final.

On Saturday he will be assisted by Paul Kettlewell and Gary Wallace. The 4th official is Jeremy Simpson.

Many thanks as always to the Ref Assessor.