Premiership referee for Turf

Bradford boss Nicky Law was angry at the way Dean had handled the match that saw two of his players red carded. The first was Mark Bower for an altercation with Dimitri Papadopoulos and then Danny Cadamarteri who went in the second half after an awful foul.

Law also accused Burnley’s Papadopoulos of cheating and trying to get players sent off. He later apologised but only for saying it and would not retract his comments. Having seen some of the incidents I have to say that I had some sympathy with the Bradford manager.

It was the game when Burnley tried to play keep ball against nine men with a 2-1 lead and disgracefully conceded in stoppage time after Steve Davis gave the ball away. Just to make things worse for Law he then say Dean send off his number two.

Over the season Dean wasn’t too busy with the red cards, there were just another seven, but he did hand out a massive 155 yellow cards in just 36 games.

He hasn’t been too quiet this season either and in just four games (three Premiership and one Division One) he has handed out a total of seventeen yellow and two red cards.

The first of those red cards was given to Charlton’s Mark Fish and that has prompted Addicks’ boss Alan Curbishley to ask for a review with the number of cards currently being handed out.

The other to see red was Watford’s loan player Paul Devlin who went right on half time as his side lost 3-2 at Derby on Wednesday of this week.

He is already showing less favour to the away players with the yellow cards and only five of the seventeen have gone to home players. In fact in the last two games he has refereed all nine cards have been shown to away players.

Dean is a referee who plays it by the book and makes use of his cards. He is the sort of referee that impresses Philip Don and that has enabled him to reach the heights of the Premiership.

His assistants tomorrow will be Gary Brittain and Rob Martin and both are from South Yorkshire.

Previous Burnley games: