Top referee kicks off the new season

A serious injury ruled him out for the rest of the season, and so serious was it that it was thought he might not referee again. But he's got himself back to fitness and his first game back in the middle will be at the Turf.

This will be his sixth Burnley game and it is fair to say there has been something of an improvement from his nightmare first, a 1-0 win against Crystal Palace in 2001. He was new to the Football League then, there were petitions being launched by supporters to have him removed, and he certainly didn't endear himself to Clarets that night with some bizarre decisions.

He turned all that around and I don't think there will be too many football supporters today over concerned to hear their club have got him as referee for a game. I don't envisage any problems tomorrow other than because of the daft directives that we usually get at this time of the season, the ones referees have to act on but no one else knows.

Clattenburg is not afraid to use his cards, and a look back at last season shows that he handed out 81 yellow and 4 red cards in 24 games. He can hardly be accused of home bias, 42 of the yellow cards were to home players with 39 to away players and all four red cards were handed out to home players.

Just as long as we don't have a home performance similar to the last time he took charge of a league game at Turf Moor – we lost that one 7-2 against Sheffield Wednesday and Ian Moore was sent off.

His assistants tomorrow will be Barry Sygmuta and Richard West whilst Jock Waugh will act as the fourth official. All three of them are from Yorkshire.

Previous Burnley games:

Season	Opps	V	Res	Y	R	Burnley players carded
a
2004/05	Liverpool	h	1-0	5	1	Chaplow Valois
2003/04	West Brom	a	1-4	5	0	Branch Camara May
2002/03	Sheffield Wed	h	2-7	6	1	I Moore(red) Armstrong Davis GnohereTaylor
2002/03	Portsmouth	h	0-3	5	0	Briscoe
2001/02	Crystal Palace	h	1-0	4	0	Grant Taylor