Just like last year the last referee is Mick Russell

Despite becoming a Football League referee in 2004 he's not refereed too many Burnley games. It was close to the end of his fourth season when he first refereed us and tomorrow will be only the fifth time he has taken charge of one of our games.

His first ever game was a League Two game at Scunthorpe which the home side won 3-1 against Rochdale. He refereed three Championship games in his first season, the first of which was Ipswich v Coventry.

Coming to the end of his tenth season he's still used mostly in the two lower divisions but this season has refereed nine games at Championship level out of 26. In those games he's yellow carded 67 players, of which 29 have gone to home team players and 38 to away team players, and sent off three, all of which came in League Two games.

He caused us no real problems in his first three Burnley games but he had an absolute nightmare in the home game against Bournemouth this season. After that game, Burnley manager Sean Dyche said: "We can only control the controllables. We can't control the referees and they have our respect.

"They do a tough job and a good job, so we roll with the punches and hope to get big decisions go our way at some point."

His performance saw him drop from 10th to 40th in RATE THE REF where his rating is now 62.08 out of 100.

His last game was Brighton's 1-1 home draw against Blackpool on Easter Monday. His average is around 2.5 cards per game but there were five in his game with Tony McMahon, Craig Cathcart, Harrison McGahey, Isaiah Osbourne and Stephen Dobbie (all Blackpool) receiving yellow cards.

The assistant referees are Constantine Hatzidakis (Kent) and Lee Swabey (Devon). The fourth official is Simon Hooper (Wiltshire) who has refereed our home games this season against QPR and Leeds.

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