Burnley's televised game against Derby County tonight will be refereed by Dean Whitestone from Northamptonshire.
It will be the sixth time the Northamptonshire official will have refereed a Burnley game and they have certainly brought some mixed performances.
He had a shocker in the first of those games, a 2-2 home draw against Watford in 2008 when he allowed Darius Henderson to get away with just about everything, and his handling of the 1-1 home draw against Crystal Palace in 2012 was no better despite him sending off Wilfried Zaha.
His last Burnley game was hardly better although, again, he sent off an opposition player. It was the 1-0 home defeat against Middlesbrough in April last year. He warned them time and time again about shirt pulling in the box at set pieces then opted to take no action when they continued to do it.
He amazingly didn't get his cards out until 12 minutes from the end; they he carded Dean Whitehead once and Daniel Ayala twice, Ayala being sent off. His first offence was speaking out of turn and the red card came out when he kicked the ball away.
His other games have been fine but his poorer performances have seen certainly had an effect on his RATE THE REF rating. He's currently 64th of 71 referees with a rating of just 46.41 out of 100.
He's been refereeing for almost a decade now; his first Football League game coming in October 2005 but he still spends more of his time in the lower divisions than he does in the Championship.
This season he has refereed a total of eight games, but only the QPR v Rotherham game has been in the Championship with four in League One, one in League Two and two Capital One Cup ties.
In those games there have been 26 yellow cards and two red cards. Of those yellows, 11 have gone to home team players and 15 to away team players. They include cards for former Clarets Alex MacDonald and Charlie Austin.
The two red cards both came in the same game when Sheffield United ended their 3-0 Capital One Cup defeat at Fulham with nine men having had both Jose Baxter and Kieran Wallace sent off in the closing stages.
Whitestone's last game was Southend v Shrewsbury in League Two a week last Saturday. Southend had Glen Rea yellow carded alongside Shrewsbury's Nathaniel Knight-Percival, Tyrone Barnett and John-Louis Akpa Akpro.
The assistant referees are Wayne Grunnill (East Yorkshire)and Paul Hodskinson (Lancashire). The fourth official is Football League referee Chris Sarginson (Staffordshire) whose last Burnley game was our 4-0 defeat at Blackpool at the end of the 2011/12 season.
Previous Burnley Games
| Season | Opponents | V | Res | Y | R | Burnley Players Carded |
| 2007/08 | WATFORD | h | 2-2 | 4 | 0 | n Akinbiyi, Caldwell, Cole |
| 2008/09 | NOTT'M FOREST | h | 5-0 | 2 | 0 | |
| 2011/12 | CRYSTAL PALACE | h | 1-1 | 4 | 1 | n Duff, Marney |
| 2012/13 | LEICESTER | a | 1-2 | 4 | 0 | n Paterson |
| 2012/13 | BLACKPOOL | a | 0-1 | 3 | 0 | |
| 2013/14 | MIDDLESBROUGH | h | 0-1 | 2 | 1 |