It's Beeby again

Hyde served an immediate three match ban and Cotterill was subsequently fined by the FA and forced to sit out the recent game at Sunderland in the stands.

Tomorrow the Burnley manager, already set for a hostile afternoon, will once again come up against Mr Beeby, news that he was clearly unhappy with when he heard last week.

Apart from Hyde’s red card he also dished out eight yellow cards that afternoon, to John McGreal and Frank Sinclair plus six Gillingham players.

In less than a month after that he sent off another five players including Paul Butler and Matthew Kilgallon of Leeds in a 1-0 defeat at Brighton, although thankfully there has just been one since when QPR’s Jamie Cureton lost it against the cheating Steve Sidwell of Reading.

He has also run up a total of 54 yellow cards in his 21 matches and Burnley need to be aware that this weak official is more likely to lean with the home side and be swayed by the crowd. Again he has incredibly shown that he is more likely to punish players away from home and just 17 of those yellow cards have gone the way of the home team with the other 37 to away team players.

This is an amazing decision by the Football League to appoint Beeby to this particular game, and so soon after our problems with him, and it appears all attempts by Burnley to get a change have failed.

His assistants at the Britannia Stadium will be David Benton (South Yorkshire) and Colin Harwood (Greater Manchester).

Previous Burnley games: