We don't want another Drysdale disaster

It is fair to say that the Lincolnshire based referee has had some nightmares when refereeing Burnley although it is fair to say there weren't too many problems last time he refereed us which was the Capital One Cup tie against Nottingham Forest in September 2013.

Prior to that there have been some horror shows and the first of them was the same fixture he'll referee tomorrow, Cardiff v Burnley. This one was in January 2006 when Steven Thompson, making his debut for Cardiff, scored twice as they netted three goals in five minutes to win 3-0.

He was poor that day but it was nothing compared to his two Burnley games later in the same year, at Hull and then at home to Southampton. In that Southampton game he sent off Wayne Thomas, rightly as it happened, and at the time I described it as one of the few decisions he actually got correct.

We got some good news after that. From that Southampton game in September 2006, we didn't see him again until January 2013 when we all hoped he'd improved, but when the Birmingham home game then dismissed our hopes, he was worse than ever and turned the game on its head with a ridiculous red card for Dean Marney, one that was rightly overturned by the FA on appeal.

Even this week he's courted controversy. Last Saturday he denied Birmingham a penalty in their 1-0 home defeat against Charlton. When Birmingham boss Gary Rowett asked him about it, he was told by Drysdale that it was a foul but not enough of one to give a decision.

He can't be blamed for an unfit pitch but on Tuesday he waited until less than an hour before kick off before calling off the League Two game between Accrington and Hartlepool.

One thing Drysdale has had this season is card free games, three of them in fourteen games, and last Saturday's game at Birmingham was the latest of them.

In the other games there have been 35 yellow cards and just the one red card. Of those yellows, 23 have gone to home team players and just twelve to away team players. The one player he's sent off is Fulham's Tom Cairney in their 3-0 home defeat to Wolves in September.

You can check the RATE THE REF Table for Darren Drysdale but I'd start at the bottom. He's currently 71st of 71 with a rating of just 24.59 out of 100. He holds the lowest rating in three of the four categories.

What can we expect tomorrow? He certainly can't turn in his worst performance. It would be impossible for him to be worse than he's been in some of those previous games. Hopefully it will be more like the Forest game.

The assistant referees are Mark Russell (Somerset) and Andrew Turner (Devon). The fourth official is Football League referee Andy Davies (Hampshire) who is still to referee a Burnley game.

Previous Burnley Games