Dean back at the Turf for Arsenal game

He's no stranger to us over the years either. His first Burnley game was the 2-2 home draw against Bournemouth in 1997 when the then manager Chris Waddle and a future Burnley manager Eddie Howe both scored.

If you take a look at the list below, he's refereed some big games. There are three East Lancs derbies in there, the play-off final at Wembley and he also refereed our last home game against Arsenal, last time in the Premier League in 2009.

I think most people will know by now that I rate him as highly as any referee in the country, but there were some questions asked after his last Burnley game against West Brom. Close scrutiny of the game will show that there was every reason to disallow both West Brom goals as they came from 2-0 behind to draw 2-2, and there is no doubt we should have had a penalty in the closing stages of the game.

He's certainly not a referee afraid to use his cards and this season, in just 30 games, he's now given out a total of 138 yellow cards and six red. Of those yellow cards, 68 have gone to home team players with 70 to away team players.

Only one of the red cards has come since Christmas and that went to Palace's Glenn Murray in their 3-1 win at West Ham.

He was busy last time with seven yellow cards in the Tyne-Wear derby. Patrick van Aanholt, Santiago Vergini, Sebastian Larsson, Jordi Gomez and Connor Wickham (all Sunderland) received yellow cards as did Newcastle's Ryan Taylor and Jack Colback.

Mike Dean remains in second place in RATE THE REF with a rating of 82.96 out of 100.

The assistant referees tomorrow are Stuart Burt (Northamptonshire) and Simon Long (Cornwall). The fourth official is Stuart Attwell (Nuneaton) whose last Burnley game was the 1-1 draw at Watford in April last year.

Previous Burnley Games