Bates back at Burnley

He can hardly be blamed though, although he was much too keen to book Paul Gascoigne when he made his Burnley debut.

He also sent off Arthur Gnohere for what proved to be head butting and he was here on the day when Stan Ternent famously sacked five players. He's also twice in games booked the Burnley goalkeeper.

There’s no doubt we hardly noticed him last time he was in charge of a Burnley game – we were too busy trying to work out just how bad we were.

That was at Coventry last season when we turned in what was the most inept performance during Stan Ternent’s time as Burnley manager.

He’s not far off averaging three yellow cards per game this season with 88 in 31 games but he’s been reasonably quiet with the red cards, there have been just three of them.

The first player to see his red card this season is a player well known to us, Nottingham Forest’s Gareth Taylor who he sent off in their 3-2 defeat at Preston just eight minutes after he had come on as a substitute.

That eight minutes was beaten next time he sent a player off, this time it was Chesterfield’s Caleb Folan and he’d been on the pitch as a sub for only six minutes as his side lost 3-1 at home to Peterborough.

Just last month he sent off Deon Burton in Brentford’s 2-1 defeat at Blackpool as he protested over the awarding of a free kick in the last minute of what had been an ugly game.

Only three times has he kept a clean sheet this season with no cards whilst the Tranmere v Luton game had him booking a total of eight players.

He’s another referee who appears to be trying to balance up the home and away bookings as the season comes to a close but he’s still way off despite a flurry of home bookings, just 29 of those yellow cards have gone to home players with the other 59 going the way of away team players.

Not as though yellow cards will count for too much tomorrow, that is unless someone gets two and he’s not handed two yellow cards out to anyone all season.

He will be assisted by Bob Lockhart (Tyne & Wear) and Tony McGee (Merseyside).

Previous Burnley games: