Taylor to officiate Everton at Palace

Referee Anthony Taylor will be in charge for Everton’s game this weekend away at Crystal Palace. This will be his third Toffees’ game season, after officiating the 2-0 win over West Ham and the 3-2 loss away at Watford.

He handed out two bookings to the Blues in each of the games, though neither of the two were as controversial as some of his recent history when in charge of Everton. This will be his 19th Premier League game of the season.

Taylor has been out of the spotlight recently, after courting controversy in December’s Manchester City versus Chelsea game where he failed to send off David Luiz, and then completely lost control of the game at the end when both sets of players were involved with running battles on the sidelines. He eventually sent off Sergio Aguero and Fernandinho, but not before we saw a scrum of players, staff and coaches that disrupted play for a few minutes.

Previously though, this very referee has been responsible for some fiascoes involving Everton.

In December 2012, he disallowed a perfectly good goal by Leon Osman, and then inexplicably sent off Carlton Cole and Darron Gibson among a bunch of other very odd decisions. And then again in March earlier this year, when he sent off Kevin Mirallas as the Hammers came from behind to win. Sandwiched in between was a surprisingly uneventful 1-1 draw in January 2015 in the FA Cup, with a last-minute equalizer from Romelu Lukaku.

Taylor was also the controversial choice for the FA Cup semi final this last season as the Blues played Manchester United. This was despite a protest from Everton fans that the referee, who lives just a matter of miles from Old Trafford, was previously removed from officiating a United game against Aston Villa for that very reason after Villa complained.

He was also in charge for the dull 0-0 Merseyside Derby in February 2015 which ended with four Toffees shown yellow cards. Before October, Everton had lost five straight games that Taylor has officiated.

Match Officials Details -

Referee: Anthony Taylor

Assistants: G Beswick, S Bennett

Fourth official: J Moss

Anthony Taylor Everton record -

World Football

Referee data courtesy of World Football