Atkinson to referee Burnley for first time since 2011

We were beaten 5-1 on a Monday night in front of the television cameras with Jay Rodriguez scoring our goal. I don't think we can point any fingers at Atkinson for this one, it was very much our own doing in a shocking second half performance.

Overall we haven't had too many problems with Atkinson other than one of our three Premier League games he refereed during the 2009/10 season. That was the 2-0 defeat at Wolves when he was confronted by Burnley boss Owen Coyle at the final whistle over the turning down of two penalties for fouls on Steven Fletcher.

Exactly the same happened soon after with Coyle again confronting him, but by this time he was managing Bolton in their 1-0 win against us.

His other Burnley Premier League game was a memorable one; it was our only away win in this league to date at Hull when he awarded us two penalties.

All of those games were away from home; Atkinson's last visit to Turf Moor was for the play-off semi-final against Reading when he gave us another penalty, converted by Graham Alexander as were the two at Hull, and then sent off Andre Bikey, who had given away the spot kick, in a later incident.

That's one of only two Turf Moor games for him, the other being a 2-0 win against Norwich in the 2006/07 season during our late rally after that long, long run without a win.

I don't have any undue concerns with Atkinson although he does, on occasions, over use his yellow card. This season in nine Premier League games he's yellow carded 35 players. Of those 15 have gone to home team players and 20 to away team players.

He's not made any use of his red card. Our opponents will recall the last time he sent off a player. It was on Boxing Day last year when he left Stoke to play over half of their game at Newcastle with nine men.

Stoke actually led 1-0 at Newcastle but in the five minutes before half time they saw Glenn Whelan and then Marc Wilson sent off and Loic Remy equalise for the home side. Newcastle went on to win the game 5-1.

I've no real concerns about tomorrow although I think we all hope we won't get any repetition of what happened on the first occasion he refereed us. That was at Crewe in February 2005 when the lights went out during the second half and the game was delayed for around twenty minutes.

The assistant referees are Mike Mullarkey (Devon) and Stephen Child (Kent). The fourth official is Kevin Friend (Leicestershire) who refereed our recent home game against West Ham.

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