Mr Atkinson ready to referee Spurs clash

Last updated : 04 April 2015 By Tony Scholes

Atkinson, who refereed our win at Hull in the 2009/10 season, was also in charge when we won away this season at Stoke, and, of course, his other game was the one at Chelsea in February when a Minute 81 goal from Ben Mee earned us a point.

I remain convinced that had Nemanja Matic not behaved like a spoilt child, and had minute 81 not provided us with a goal there would have been no bleating whatsoever over the incident to which no one reacted at the time.

Poor Atkinson, and it is not often I defend referees, came under just as much attack as did Ashley Barnes but some of the press was ridiculous, including the idiot Graham Poll, a poor referee himself who now feels obliged to insult his former colleagues.

Poll said on the following day: "A refereeing performance in a Southern Mediterranean or South American country like Martin Atkinson's at Stamford Bridge on Saturday would have started accusations of corruption. Here in England thankfully we accept honest incompetence."

I think he was lenient on Barnes with the aerial challenge on the squealing Branislav Ivanovic and might have given a penalty when Jason Shackell pushed the ground thumping Diego Costa, but I remain 100% convinced he got the minute 69 incident absolutely correct.

So recent was it that he's only refereed three Premier League games since and two of them, like ours at Chelsea, have ended with only 21 players on the pitch. He sent off Newcastle's Fabricio Coloccini in their 3-0 defeat at Everton.

Last time out he was back on Merseyside and had absolutely no option but to red card Steven Gerrard in Liverpool's 2-1 home defeat against Man United.  He also yellow carded both Joe Allen and Mario Balotelli of Liverpool in that game along with United's Phil Jones and Ander Herrera.

That's taken his total of cards in 29 games to 113 yellow and six red. Of those yellow cards, 42 have gone to home team players with 71 to away team players.

The RATE THE REF table was last updated in the week before the Chelsea game and Atkinson was seventh with a rating of 70.23 out of 100.

There was a red card last time he refereed at Turf Moor. That was the 2009 play-off semi-final against Reading when a certain Andre Bikey totally lost the plot.

The assistant referees tomorrow  are Mike Mullarkey (Devon) and Stephen Child (Kent). The fourth official is Bobby Madley (Ossett) whose last Burnley game was our 2-0 home win against Derby in March last year.

Previous Burnley Games

Season Opponents V Res Y R Burnley Players Carded
             
2004/05 CREWE a 1-1 1 0 n Whittingham
2004/05 SHEFFIELD UNITED a 1-2 2 0 n Cahill
2006/07 NORWICH h 2-0 2 0 n Caldwell
2008/09 TOTTENHAM a 1-4 1 0 n Duff
2008/09 READING h 1-0 1 1  
2009/10 WOLVES a 0-2 3 0 n Gudjonsson
2009/10 BOLTON a 0-1 5 0 n Elliott, McDonald
2009/10 HULL a 4-1 6 0 n Mears
2010/11 WEST HAM a 1-5 2 0 n Rodriguez, Elliott
2014/15 STOKE a 2-1 4 0 n Ings, Heaton
2014/15 CHELSEA a 1-1 3 1 n Boyd, Kightly