He previously refereed the game at Ipswich in August which we lost 2-0 but he had a good game that night and that's been the case in all but one of his four Burnley games to date, the exception being our 1-0 win at Charlton in March 2013 when he had a shocker.
He's been a Football League referee since the start of the 2008/09 season, kicking off with a League Two game between Exeter and Shrewsbury and he refereed one Championship game that season, a 4-0 home win for Norwich against Barnsley.
In the last couple of seasons he's been given more and more games at our level and this season actually kicked off in the Premier League at Carrow Road, where he'd first taken charge of a Championship game.
It didn't go well for him, particularly when he strangely disallowed a spectacular over head kicked goal for dangerous play that upset Norwich boss Alex Neil. He hasn't refereed in the Premier League since.
Nine of his 17 games this season have been in the Championship and he even had a card free game in the QPR v Cardiff game in August, his only such game this season.
He's shown 42 yellow cards in total with just the one red card for Bolton's Prince Gouano in a 1-1 home draw against Leeds. Of the yellow cards, 20 have gone the way of home team players and 22 to away team players.
His last game saw him yellow card four players in the Nottingham Forest v Derby game. Forest had Jonny Williams carded in the first minute for diving, a brilliant spot from Hooper, along with David Vaughan and Nelson Oliveira. Cyrus Christie was the only Derby player carded.
Simon Hooper is currently 18th in RATE THE REF with a rating of 69.19 out of 100 from four qualifying games.
Hopefully we'll see the Hooper who has refereed the previous Burnley games other than the one against Charlton. If so, we should get a decent performance from him.
The assistant referees are William Smallwood (Cheshire) and Steven Meredith (Nottinghamshire). The fourth official is Football League referee Tony Harrington (Cleveland) who refereed our 2-1 home defeat earlier in the season.
Previous Burnley Games
| Season | Opponents | V | Res | Y | R | Burnley Players Carded |
| 2011/12 | MILLWALL | a | 1-0 | 5 | 0 | n Trippier, Bartley, Easton |
| 2012/13 | CHARLTON | a | 1-0 | 4 | 0 | n Austin, Lafferty, Vokes, Paterson |
| 2013/14 | LEEDS | h | 2-1 | 2 | 0 | n Jones |
| 2015/16 | IPSWICH | a | 0-2 | 1 | 0 | n Kightly |