Another Premiership referee

He had a particularly poor game at the Den in 2004, allowing some little bloke in a blue shirt carrying the word ‘Wise' to run the show and fell for it completely when he sent off Paul Weller. A year later at Blackburn he could so easily have sent off Lily in the opening exchanges but yellow carded him.

We didn't see him at all last season when he was rated one of the best referees in the Premiership, but we need to be aware that he doesn't run the Graham Poll system of three yellow cards before a red.

He has his moments with the cards and overall last season, in 47 games, he gave out 117 yellow cards and 7 red cards, the last of those red cards going to Tugay (you see I told you he wasn't all bad). He was also the referee who sent off Luis Garcia and Hayden Mullens in a late league game that cost both of them a place in the FA Cup Final.

We can't complain though, I don't think we could have done much better than to get Clattenburg and Webb in the first two games, although some were not over convinced of Clattenburg's performance on Saturday. Don't worry though, the bad ones will follow, Laws, Miller and Beeby are still around.

The assistant referees are Ian Gosling (Kent) and Andy Williams (Herefordshire), the fourth official is Football League referee Pat Miller (Bedfordshire) who is just starting his second season on the league list.