This will be our fourth game with the referee who is currently second only to Graham Scott in the race to a century of cards. Scott, who refereed our game at Coventry on Saturday is now on 72 which is 8 ahead of the Deadman.
Darren Deadman has certainly built up a reputation for himself since joining the league list for the 2005/06 season. He must enjoy filling in reports because his card total has now passed 770 including a fair number of reds.
His third and most recent Burnley game was our 1-0 win at Hull last season when there were just two yellow cards. He was quieter on that occasion than his previous two games when some of his decisions took some believing.
The yellow carding of Michael Ricketts at Ipswich in his first Burnley game was laughable and the red card for Wayne Thomas was embarrassing, as was his awarding of a penalty against Michael Duff.
At Wolves, in the promotion season, he turned in one of the worst refereeing performances I'd seen in a long time (other than Lee Mason of course). That day I described his performance as incompetent but said I wanted to use a stronger word. He basically handed the game to Wolves on a plate.
This season he managed four red cards in his first three games but there have been none since. In his 16 games he's already up at 65 yellow cards with 23 going to home team players and 42 to away team players.
This man is one seriously bad referee. He may well turn in a decent performance tonight in South Wales but he worries me and there is a good chance there will be a bag full of cards thrown in.
My heart sunk last week when I saw his name against this fixture, and the only fortunate thing is that we haven't had him refereeing Burnley games too often.
His rating in RATE THE REF is 42.44 - and he is currently in 48th place.
The assistant referees are Andrew Davies (Hampshire) and Andrew Turner (Devon). The fourth official is Football League referee James Linington (Isle of Wight) who had something of a nightmare last time he refereed Burnley at Crystal Palace last season.
Previous Burnley Games
| Season | Opponents | V | Res | Y | R | Burnley Players Carded |
| 2005/06 | Ipswich Town | a | 1-2 | 5 | 1 | n Thomas n Thomas, Ricketts, Spicer, Elliott |
| 2007/08 | Wolverhampton W | a | 0-2 | 7 | 1 | n Carlisle n Jordan, Jensen, Carlisle, Blake, McCann, McDonald |
| 2010/11 | Hull City | a | 1-0 | 2 | 0 | n Fox Mears |