The Premier League has confirmed that Samuel Barrott will officiate Liverpool’s game away to Southampton on Sunday.
Barrott will be assisted by linesmen Lee Betts and Wade Smith, while Darren England has been confirmed as the fourth official. Michael Oliver will be the main VAR at Stockley Park and he will be assisted by Matt Wilkes.
Barrott has only previously refereed one Liverpool game, taking charge of the Reds’ 5-2 win over Norwich City in the fourth round of last season’s FA Cup.
Yorkshireman Barrott began refereeing matches in the EFL in 2020 and made the step up to the Premier League last season, having since refereed 22 games in the top flight.
In those 22 games, Barrott has issued 88 yellow cards and just one red card, which was shown to Fulham striker Raul Jimenez for serious foul play in a 3-0 defeat by Newcastle last December.
There will be plenty of attention on the officials this weekend, with this round of fixtures being the first since last week’s scandal surrounding PGMOL official David Coote. Coote found himself at the center of a number of allegations when two incriminating videos emerge that allegedly featured the Nottinghamshire referee.
Coote was suspended by the PGMOL pending a full investigation following the emergence of the first video, which showed a man alleged to be Coote describing a Liverpool performance as ‘s—‘ and calling Jurgen Klopp, who was the Liverpool manager when the video was recorded, a ‘German c—‘.
The PGMOL issued an update on its investigation into Coote ahead of this weekend’s round of fixtures, which said: “We are following an internal process and taking the allegations into David Coote’s conduct very seriously as part of our ongoing full and thorough investigation.
“Whilst David remains suspended, his welfare continues to be important to us and he is aware of the support network available to him.”
