Mike Dean to referee first game of the year

The 46-year-old Dean has been refereeing for a long time and we first saw him at Burnley for a home game against Bournemouth in 1997, the day Chris Waddle scored his only Burnley goal and Eddie Howe scored for Bournemouth for the first time.

Tomorrow will be his 27th Burnley game and, it is fair to say, there have been some good games from him and some not so good. Most Burnley fans will point to him awarding a penalty to Blackburn in 2010 as one of his not so good days; that's certainly the case and the other I would add was his handling of our 2-2 draw at Bradford in 2002.

But he refereed our play-off final win at Wembley in 2009 and was also in charge when we finally ended that long run without a win against Blackburn, he even dealt with the chicken delay very well. For me, his best performance was probably the cup tie at West Brom in 2009.

There were question marks over his performance at Palace this season on two counts. He yellow carded Danny Ings for diving when he clearly hadn't. That decision was really made by the assistant but it was Dean who opted not to give Mile Jedinak a second yellow when he hauled down Lukas Jutkiewicz for our penalty.

There were five yellow cards in that game and he's certainly been collecting plenty of cards this season with 70 yellow and five red in his 16 games to date. Of those yellows, 39 have gone to home team players with 31 to away team players.

Interestingly, he's refereed Newcastle twice this season. He sent off Mike Williamson in their 0-0 draw at Aston Villa and there was a red card for Moussa Sissoko in their 1-0 defeat at West Ham.

His most recent game was Crystal Palace's 3-1 home defeat on Boxing Day against Southampton at Selhurst Park. The only player yellow carded in that game was Palace's Damien Delaney.

Dean lost his place at the top of the RATE THE REF Table last season when Neil Swarbrick scored 92.4 out of 10 in his one and only Burnley game to date; he's fourth official tomorrow. Dean remains in second place with a rating of 84.26 out of 10.

The assistant referees are Richard West (East Yorkshire) and Andy Garratt (West Midlands). The fourth official is Neil Swarbrick (Lancashire).

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