We've got a Friend back at the Turf

On that occasion, with Keith Treacy in outstanding form for Preston, we trailed 3-1 and looked dead and buried until their right-back Billy Jones received a second yellow card for time waiting and was sent off.

Darren Ferguson wasn't too impressed but Burnley were as the North End team hit the panic button. Chris Iwelumo, who had scored our goal, added two more to complete a hat trick and Jay Rodriguez, on as a substitute, headed home a late winner.

We've had our own problems with him, although not so much in his first Burnley game which, like tomorrow, was a home game against West Ham, this in the 2004/05 season.

Probably his two worst games involving Burnley both ended in away wins. The first of them was at  Watford in November 2007, our first win under Owen Coyle, and the other not long after when we came from 2-0 behind to win 4-2 at QPR.

Now aged 43, he's been a Football League referee since 2003 and became a select group official in 2009. His first Premier League game was Wolves v Fulham in September 2009 and a week later he was allocated his second which was our 2-1 home win against Birmingham when Steven Fletcher and Andre Bikey both scored their first league goals for us.

Now firmly established as a Premier League referee, he's not shy when it comes to using his cards, but for some time those cards have been exclusively yellow. He has sent off only one player since the start of last season, that was Sunderland's Wes Brown in a 2-0 defeat at Stoke. It was the first of three red cards for Brown last season although this one was overturned on appeal.

This season he's refereed seven games so far. The first two were in the Championship and he's followed that up with four Premier League games and one in the Capital One Cup.

There have been 28 yellow cards in those games with 12 of them going to home players and 16 to away players.

His last game was Manchester United's 2-1 home win against Everton two weeks ago. There were no fewer than seven yellow cards in that game. The players carded were Danny Blind, Antonio Valencia, Robin van Persie and James Wilson (United) and Tim Howard, Muhamed Besic and Steven Pienaar (Everton).

He's one of just two referees in the Premier League RATE THE REF Table with a rating less than fifty and he sits in bottom place, just below Craig Pawson, with a rating of 47.82 out of 10.

The assistant referees are Lee Betts (Norfolk) and Matthew Wilkes (West Midlands). The fourth official is Lee Mason (Bolton). He was also the fourth official for our last home game against Sunderland but hasn't refereed us since the 1-1 home draw against Blackburn in December 2012.

Previous Burnley Games