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The 34-year-old Deadman has been on the Football League referees list since the beginning of the 2005/06 season, and yet in only just over three seasons he's already handed out a total of 396 yellow cards and thirty red cards.
In his only Burnley game to date he had something of a nightmare. He yellow carded Michael Ricketts for rubbing his stomach after giving us the lead against Ipswich in February 2006 but went one better when he sent off Wayne Thomas for apparently questioning the most ridiculous of penalty decisions. The penalty won the game for the home side.
I described him as incompetent that afternoon and suggested he'd lost the plot whilst even home manager Joe Royle laughed at the penalty decision whilst Thomas said he didn't even speak to the referee.
This season he's racing away and has already completed his half century of yellow cards. In total he's yellow carded 55 players and sent off five in just thirteen games. Those he's sent off are QPR's Emmanuel Ledesma in their 1-1 draw at Bristol City, Alan Sheehan of Leeds in a 3-1 win at Swindon, Sheffield United's Sun Jihai in their 1-1 home draw against Coventry, Derby goalkeeper Roy Carroll in the game with irregular betting at Norwich that they won 2-1 and Lee Collins of Port Vale as they won 2-1 at Shrewsbury.
He's been collecting a few home players in recent games with his yellow cards but it is still twice as likely that he'll yellow card away players. So far 18 of those yellow cards have gone to home players with 37 to away players whilst four of those sent off were away players.
No matter what tomorrow I don't expect a game where the referee is hardly noticed, Darren Deadman usually makes sure of that.
He will be assisted by Russell Fletcher (Derbyshire) and Rob Merchant (Staffordshire) whilst the fourth official will be Neil Radford (Worcestershire). Previous Burnley games: Season | Opps | V | Res | Y | R | Burnley players carded | a | | | | | | | 2005/06 | Ipswich | a | 1-2 | 5 | 1 | Elliott Ricketts Spicer Thomas(Y/R) |
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