That game against Arsenal followed the home games against Sunderland and Bolton and the away games at Blackburn and West Ham. Overall in those five games he did well although there were some serious questions asked about Blackburn's second at Ewood and a potential foul on goalkeeper Brian Jensen.
Then manager Owen Coyle said on Goals on Sunday that all five West Ham goals were down to poor refereeing from Foy in our 5-3 defeat there but in all honesty those goals had everything to do with our inability to defend rather than a poor referee.
In that Premier League season of ours, Foy averaged around three yellow cards per game and that's low. This season he's even lower with just 44 yellow cards in 24 games and only one red card shown and that one which received a lot of publicity.
The red card came in Swansea's FA Cup tie at home to Chelsea when Foy red carded Chelsea's Eden Hazard in the ball boy incident. No matter what your view on that incident I think it was agreed by all that Foy had little option.
He was also involved in an incident last week that could have led to a red card. Michael Owen, playing for Stoke, punched Arsenal's Mikel Arteta following a bad challenge. Foy, who confirmed he had seen the incident, took no action. Three players were yellow carded in that game, all of them from Stoke. They were Ryan Shawcross, Andy Wilkinson and Glenn Whelan.
Only Mark Halsey of the Premier League referees is close to Foy in terms of cards per game this season and of those 44 cards, 21 have gone to home team players and 24 to away team players.
When I see the name of the referee allocated to a Burnley game I sometimes have real concerns. With Foy, who sits in 16th place in the RATE THE REF Table with a rating of 71.66 out of 100, I really don't have too many worries. Hopefully he'll give us the sort of performance that doesn't change my view on him.
The assistant referees are Dave Bryan (Lincolnshire) and John Flynn (Wiltshire). The fourth official is Football League referee Steve Rushton (Staffordshire) who has refereed Burnley once, against Portsmouth at home last season, and had a nightmare.
Previous Burnley Games
Season Opponents V Res Y R Burnley Players Carded 1997/98 LINCOLN h 2-1 5 1 n Blatherwick, Winstanley 1998/99 BURY h 1-4 2 0 n Little 1999/2000 OLDHAM a 1-0 3 0 n Cook 1999/2000 NOTTS COUNTY a 0-2 5 0 n Branch, Little, Mullin, West 2000/01 WEST BROM h 1-1 2 0 n Thomas 2002/03 ROTHERHAM h 2-6 5 0 n Blake, Davis, Little 2003/04 CRYSTAL PALACE h 2-3 4 2 n Gnohere, Weller 2003/04 WOLVES a 0-2 2 0 n Branch 2004/05 ROTHERHAM a 0-0 1 0 n Duff 2004/05 ASTON VILLA h 3-1 1 0 n Grant 2006/07 STOKE a 1-0 3 0 n Elliott, Harley 2007/08 HULL h 0-1 1 1 n Unsworth 2008/09 ARSENAL a 0-3 1 0 n McDonald 2009/10 SUNDERLAND h 3-1 3 0 2009/10 BLACKBURN a 2-3 6 0 n Carlisle, Jensen, Mears 2009/10 WEST HAM h 3-5 3 1 n Jensen n Caldwell 2009/10 BOLTON h 1-1 1 0 2009/10 ARSENAL a 1-3 4 0 n McDonald, Paterson, Carlisle, ElliottSource: Clarets Mad
Source: FOOTYMAD
