Whitestone is the man in the middle

Whitestone, an officer in the Metropolitan Police, is a referee of whom I'm never so sure what to expect. He's had a couple of decent games refereeing Burnley but there have also been a couple of horror shows from him at Turf Moor.

I don't think anyone will know how Darius Henderson didn't get a red card when playing for Watford at Burnley in 2007/08 and although he did send off Wilfried Zaha in 2012 it was another shocker from him.

He's been refereeing in the Football League for some time. Although he was still a Conference referee during the 2005/06 season he took charge of eight Football League games, the first of which was the League Two game between Notts County and Carlisle that ended 0-0.

By the following season he was a permanent member of the national list and was given his first Championship game in September 2005 when he refereed Luton's 2-1 win at Barnsley. He also handed out his first Championship red card that season, sending off Southend's Ritchie Foran in a 2-2 draw against Leicester.

Despite his experience he is still very much a lower division referee. He's refereed 30 games this season with only six of them at Championship level. In those games he's yellow carded 79 players and sent off four, three of those red cards coming in his first five games of the season.

Of those yellow cards, 44 have gone to home team players with 37 to away team players. His last game was the 0-0 draw between Stevenage and Wolves on 1st April. The only player carded in that game was former Claret Kevin McDonald.

I'm not sure what we'll get from him but overall he's not faired too well in RATE THE REF and sits in 58th place with a rating of 49.59 out of 10.

The assistant referees are Philip Dermott (Lancashire) and Peter Wright (Merseyside). The fourth official is Football League Kevin Wright (Cambridgeshire) whose last Burnley game was the 1-1 draw at Barnsley last season.

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