A third East Lancs derby for Mike Dean

He refereed the FA Cup tie at Turf Moor in 2005 between the two clubs, but Burnley fans, I am sure, will point to that previous game when he was clearly conned into awarding a match winning penalty by Martin Olsson, Having said that, in fairness, over the years, he's had some very good games refereeing the Clarets.

One I'll always recall was his handling of our FA Cup tie at West Brom in 2009. That was a master class in how to keep a game going and how to make the very best use of advantage. It's a performance that young referees making their way should sit down and watch.

He's refereed us on nine occasions since RATE THE REF was introduced at the beginning of the 2007/08 season, and, despite that Blackburn game at the Turf in 2010, his performances have been good enough to see him hold first place with a rating of 84.65 out of 10.

He's not a referee afraid to use his cards and this season he's handed out 86 yellow cards and five red cards in 25 games. A total of 36 of those yellow cards have gone to home team players with 50 shown to away team players. None of the red cards have involved Championship players.

Dean's last game came last Sunday when he refereed the Swansea v Crystal Palace game in the Premier League. It was not without controversy. He awarded Palace a late penalty that led to him sending off Swansea's Chico but the offence appeared to be outside the box.

He did, though, rightly call the dive by Palace's Jerome Thomas. He yellow carded him for the offence whilst the other players yellow carded in the game were Leon Britton (Swansea) and Palace's Scott Dann and Mile Jedinak.

I have to say I was pleased when I saw earlier in the week who had been allocated to referee this game. There are no guarantees that he'll have a good game but there's more chance with him than many others refereeing right now.

The assistant referees are Matthew Wilkes and Constantine Hatzidakis. The fourth official is Phil Dowd (Stoke) who has just carried out the same duties in the Arsenal v Everton FA Cup tie.

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