Miller again

We know all about Miller, right from his first Burnley game in the 2003/04 season against West Brom, he was so bad that day that manager Stan Ternent stormed onto the pitch to remonstrate with him when he awarded a free kick AGAINST us after Tony Grant had been chopped down. That day I reported that he was the most incompetent of referees who had no idea what was going on.

He's been worse than that, he made a massive point deciding contribution to our defeat at QPR two seasons ago and last season made a real hash of the home game against Coventry, this time the poor decisions probably going our way.

His most recent Burnley game was the home draw against Sheffield Wednesday and again he had a very poor game and he missed a blatant handball in the Sheffield Wednesday box. Mind you that's consistent with all referees now given our penalty record.

The one consolation is he's not the most card happy of referees, although he does have his moments. In 33 games this season he's handed out 81 yellow cards and 9 red. Of those yellow cards 37 have gone to home team players and 44 to away team players.

We need to be aware that all but one of his red cards this season have gone to away team players and that already includes one player at St Andrew's, although we can hardly criticise the referee for that. He sent off West Brom's Paul Robinson for his assault on Damien Johnson.

Prior to his last Burnley game I said: "Nigel Miller has to be a better referee than the one we've seen in previous games, he simply would not have been allowed to continue refereeing if that was his standard." We're still waiting, but if we think this is bad, it gets much worse on Monday.

He will be assisted at St Andrew's by Glyn Mellor (Derbyshire) and Dave Naylor (Nottinghamshire) and the fourth official will be Alan Sheffield (West Midlands).

Previous Burnley games:

Season	Opps	V	Res	Y	R	Burnley players carded
a
2006/07	Sheffield Wed	h	1-1	1	0	J O'Connor
2005/06	Stoke	h	1-0	3	0	Duff Hyde Sinclair
2005/06	Coventry	h	4-0	0	1	.
2004/05	QPR	a	0-3	5	0	Blake Duff McGreal Sinclair
2004/05	Bury	a	3-2	1	0	.
2003/04	West Brom	h	1-1	4	1	Grant McGregor