Premiership referee Steve Bennett is in charge for the visit of Sheffield United to Loftus Road.

Queens Park Rangers v Sheffield United
Referee – Steve Bennett (Orpington)
Assistants – Gosling and Massey
Fourth Official - Wright

Two managers have had reason to be displeased with officials this week – Neil Warnock with Richard Beeby and whoever the hell was in charge of Coventry City last weekend with Mark Halsey.

Crystal Palace played at Bristol City on Monday night in an entertaining, if fairly poor quality, match between two of the promotion contenders in the Championship. It doesn’t happen very often but I’m forced to side with Neil Warnock for the first time in my life. Richard Beeby’s handling of the Monday night match was stunning. Some of the decisions he gave, the vast majority in the favour of Bristol City, had me shaking my head and I can only imagine how the Palace players and supporters felt about his display. I thought little of his decision to blow the half time whistle as Palace broke away until he decided to add another minute and a half on top of the four advertised at full time seemingly because he wanted to see where Bristol City’s attacking free kick and subsequent corner ended up. Predictably the latter ended up nestling in the bottom corner of the Palace net. How can that be justified? How can you blow exactly on time when one team is attacking but allow another side a further free kick and a corner after time has passed?

It wasn’t just the dodgy time keeping that went in City’s favour. In the first half a through ball from City ran past Dele Adebola and through to Speroni the keeper. Adebola and Lawrence came together in an incident a defender will experience thousand times a season without being punished. Adebola was never going to reach the ball, and didn’t appeal for a foul, and yet not only was a free kick given but Lawrence was booked as well.

Then there’s the Bristol City penalty, which they missed, three minutes from time. I’ve watched the replay ten times or more and I still can’t pick an offence worthy of a penalty. If we’re going to give those then we’re going to be in trouble, because every match is going to finish about ten all. To give such a penalty, and then add so much extra unwarranted stoppage time until City scored in my opinion raises serious questions about Beeby’s handling of the match – it was as poor a refereeing display as I’ve seen all season and I’d like to think he’s been asked some serious questions by his superiors this week.

Coventry have a right to be upset with Mr Halsey after their FA Cup thumping by West Brom last weekend. Michael Doyle was sent off in the first half, a straight red, for very little in my opinion. Gera rolled around screaming and clutching his knee after a one footed tackle on him and Halsey produced a red card after some delay. Halsey is, as regular readers will know, one of the best referees in the world in my opinion but just lately he’s been involved in a couple of straight red card offences where he hardly covered himself in glory. Doyle certainly deserved a yellow at most, and the decision to send Ipswich’s Liam Trotter off in their FA Cup game with Portsmouth was also very harsh. The fact the neither player got off on appeal says more for the ludicrous appeal system than it does the decisions. In both the Doyle and Trotter incidents Halsey seemed to take advice in his ear from a fourth official – this has to stop. Mark Halsey is a superb referee, whoever is on the touchline is not as good. Let him make the decisions, keep whichever nobody is holding the board up on the touchline back in his box and not interfering.

It’s a Premier League official for us this weekend as Steve Bennett takes charge of our match with Sheffield United at Loftus Road. Unlike some of his colleagues Bennett is not an official who drops out of the Premier League too often – and this is just his third Championship match of 35 games he has taken charge of this season. In those 35 games he has shown 102 yellows (2.9 a game) and eight reds which is about average. His biggest hauls have been six yellows and one red in the Man City v Spurs match in December and three yellows and two reds in both the Wolves v Norwich game and Portsmouth v Man Utd earlier in the year. Although he has only done three Championship games this year his last one was only a couple of weeks ago – four were booked in Stoke’s 2-1 victory against Cardiff.

Last season he booked 151 (3.35 a match) and sent 14 off in 45 games. As Sheff Utd were a Premiership team they had the pleasure a few times – a 3-0 victory against West Ham (five booked), a 4-0 defeat at Liverpool (two booked) and a 1-0 win at Newcastle (four booked).

For his last QPR match you have to look all the way back to 2003 when he was in charge of our play off semi final at Oldham and, in truth, he made a bit of a pig’s ear of it. Eighty players were booked, Richard Langley was sent off and subsequently suspended for the final. He looked like a Premiership referee who thought the whole League One thing was beneath him. He went on to do Sheff Utd’s big day at Cardiff a week and a half later, they lost 3-0 to Wolves in the final. He did our two one home victory over Wycombe earlier in the season as well, booking five.

Elsewhere this weekend Jarnail Singh has Plymouth v Burnley, Probert has Carlisle v Doncaster, Andy Hall has Bury v Darlington and Uriah Rennie has Shrewsbury v Hereford which sounds like just the kind of lower league derby game that Rennie likes to bowl in with his giant ego and make a complete massacre of.

Looking ahead to Tuesday we have Eddie Ilderton for the trip to Barnsley, he denied us a blatant penalty at Wigan a few years ago in one of his first ever football league matches but we haven’t seen a great deal of him since. More on him on Monday.

Photo: Action Images

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