Atkinson is in the middle tonight at West Ham

In his first two Burnley games last season he certainly upset one of the two managers. At Wolves it was the Burnley manager who confronted him at the final whistle after two clear penalties had been turned down for fouls on Steven Fletcher. Just the following month at Bolton it was the home manager who wanted words with him despite his side having won.

Over at Hull it was Iain Dowie who was upset at some of the crucial decisions but the television cameras were able to sort those out and show he'd got them all correct.

This season Atkinson has refereed 23 domestic games and there have been 75 yellow cards and 8 red cards in those games. Of those yellow cards, 30 have gone to home team players and 45 to away team players.

All eight players sent off have been in Premier League games although there has been only one since November, that of Jermain Defoe in Tottenham's 2-1 win at Aston Villa.

Last time out for Atkinson was on Saturday 5^th February and Manchester City's 3-0 win against West Brom, the game that saw an end to Roberto Di Matteo's management of West Brom. There were three yellow cards in the game; they were Pablo Zabaleta (Manchester City) and both James Morrison and Steven Reid (West Brom).

The assistant referees tonight are Mike Mullarkey (Devon) and Mike Cairns (Somerset) and the fourth official is Premier League referee Phil Dowd (Stoke).

Previous Burnley games:

Season	Opps	V	Res	Y	R	Burnley players carded
a
2004/05	Crewe	a	1-1	1	0	Whittingham
2004/05	Sheffield Utd	a	1-2	2	0	Cahill
2006/07	Norwich	h	2-0	2	0	Caldwell
2008/09	Tottenham	a	1-4	1	0	Duff
2008/09	Reading	h	1-0	1	1	.
2009/10	Wolves	a	0-2	3	0	Gudjonsson
2009/10	Bolton	a	0-1	5	0	Elliott McDonald
2009/10	Hull	a	4-1	6	0	Mears