Whichever way you want to look at it, he shouldn't be given a game which involves a team local to him. Plenty of other games he could have been given which completely eliminates anyone drawing any conclusions either way.
I have no idea if the FA has that many refs floating around that they're able to do this. But I don't imagine that a 'top' ref is much more likely to deliberately perform badly to help out a local team than a player is.Surely there was a southern England ref who could have been appointed? To avoid any suggestion of bias.