Stephen Warnock will be writing a cheque out to The FA this week for £1,500 after his 87th minute booking at the Stadium of Light, making a total of £7,500 he’s contributed to the Soho Square coffers so far this season. It’s not Warnock’s bank account I’m concerned about though, I’m sure he can take that hit – you may have already done the math yourself – yes, Warnock picked up his 5th booking of the season against Sunderland and will therefore miss the next game.

Fortunately, that game happens to be Burnley in the Carling Cup on Wednesday and he’ll be available again, with a fresh slate of sorts, for the game against Birmingham at the weekend.

The cynic in me wonders whether he might have followed Beckham’s precedent, but the point remains that Warnock was only cautioned four times from 42 appearances in all competitions last season, yet he was carrying the same number of bookings into the Sunderland game from just nine appearances.

Newcastle’s James Perch set some kind of record by receiving a yellow card in each of his first five matches and was forced to miss his side’s 4-3 Carling Cup victory at Chelsea. Stoke’s Dean Whitehead also has five bookings this season. It’s some club that Warnock has just joined.

But Warnock’s not alone at Villa and although he’s clearly playing his part in putting us at the top of the foul table with 141 fouls, he’s not the worst offender. That honour lies jointly with Petrov and Ashley Young who have 18 fouls each. I noticed a few weeks ago that Stan was among the top 5 most persistent foulers in the league with a foul every 36 minutes, although that looks more like every 41 minutes to me now, the same as Reo-Coker.

On the basis of time spent on the pitch, the worst offender at Villa is John Carew with his 15 fouls coming every 25 minutes on average, although I really think referees do him a grave injustice. Not far behind John is Steve Sidwell and Emile Heskey who both gave away free kicks every 32 minutes.

Habib Beye hasn’t given away a single foul in just over three hours on the pitch. Beye might consider forming a Saints Club with Stewart Downing (3 fouls = every 270 minutes), Luke Young (3 fouls = every 210 minutes) and Carlos Cuellar (1 foul = every 135 minutes).

The increase in the number of fouls may well be due to playing a greater pressing game, in which case it isn’t the end of the world, but being the worst team in the league is probably going a tad too far. Of course, giving away possession and a dead ball opportunity is bound to hurt us in the long run too.

Moderation is always a good thing in my book and with Petrov likely to miss several games a couple of months, I hope someone will have a little word in Steve Sidwell’s ear sooner rather than later.