Peter Walton Peter Walton, 47 years of age from Northamptonshire, will be the unfamiliar face in the middle at Pride Park as we take on Derby County in the live Setanta Premiership match on Monday night. It will be just Walton’s third appearance in the middle of a Newcastle match.

» Form Guide

Walton has taken charge of 5 games this season to date, 2 in the Premiership, one in the Championship, one in League 2, and one in the Carling Cup. The games have resulted in 3 away wins, a home win and a draw, with 18 goals in the 5 games. Of 13 yellow cards shown, 11 have been to away players, and he has yet to dismiss anybody or award a penalty.

» Background

Walton began refereeing around 21 years ago in Northamptonshire, progressing to the Football League list of Assistant Referees and then the corresponding Premier League list in 1994. He became a FIFA assistant in 1996, and ran the line on the FA Cup Final of that year and at Euro 96. He progressed to the Football League Referees’ list in 1998, and then finally became a Select Group Referee in 2003. Since then he has refereed sporadically in the Premier League, more often than not featuring in the Football League instead.

» Walton and Newcastle

Walton has only done 2 Newcastle games in the history of time, our 1-1 draw with Charlton Athletic at The Valley in October 2004, when he cautioned one player from each side, and the game nobody wants to remember, the 5-1 loss to Birmingham in the FA Cup 3rd Round Replay earlier this year, when he dismissed Steven Taylor for Denying an Obvious Goalscoring Opportunity, having cautioned him earlier.

» Paul’s Daft Fact

Scraping the bottom of the barrel for this one…
This will be Walton’s third Newcastle game….and all three will have been played on the seventeenth day of a month (October, January, and in this case September).

» Conclusions

Peter Walton is a bit of an unknown quantity. Having not seen a lot of him, I’m going to reserve judgement!