Darren Deadman is in W12 this Saturday for the second QPR appointment of his career.

Queens Park Rangers v Bristol City
Referee - Darren Deadman (Cheshunt)
Assistants – Barnes and Buck
Fourth Official - Beck

This weekend our match will be refereed by possibly the greatest named referee ever – Darren Deadman from Cambridgeshire.

This is only his third season on the league list and he’s done enough to be fast tracked through to the Championship in that time. As regular readers will know I’m not a fan of the fast tracking but Deadman isn’t the worst example of a fast tracked referee you’ll see this season (Steve Bratt, Jarnail Singh) although he can be over fussy at times and has a school teacher like manner with the players when addressing and booking them.

Deadman refereed at Loftus Road last season as we beat Hull City 2-0. He booked six players that day and was awarded a mark of six for his performance, good enough for joint tenth on the referee league.

Referee: D Deadman (Cambridgeshire) 6 - Mr Deadman booked six men, three from each side in a far from dirty game. Paul Jones was booked for time wasting towards the end - surely a similar punishment should have been handed to the opposition in the first half? He missed a number of fouls, particularly defenders man-handling attackers. LFW Hull Match Report

So far this season Deadman has shown 58 (2.9 a match) yellow cards and two reds in 20 matches. That’s a low average but he has shown seven yellows in a match on two occasions, including a recent game between Peterborough and Bradford. Only three of his matches so far this season have been in the Championship during which he has shown seven yellows and no reds.

Last season he showed 136 (4.3 a game) yellows and 12 reds in 31 matches which is a very high average and much worse than he’s putting out this campaign. Again, only three of those games were Championship fixture including our game with Hull City. Almost a year ago to the day he was booking nine and sending one off in a game across West London between Brentford and Bradford. During December 2006 he showed six yellows and a red in two games in quick succession and eight and one just before that. He went on to show eight and two in a game between Scunthorpe and Oldham but he does seem to have calmed down a bit this season.

Elsewhere I see risky appointments for big games. Norwich and Preston for example will be viewing their meeting this weekend as a big moment in the season so far as they try to pull away from the bottom of the table – they’ll be battling against Jarnail Singh as well as each other. There’s no love lost between play off chasing Cardiff and Stoke either, and consequently the police have enforced an early kick off on the fixture. So, a nice calm and sensible match official to keep the game under control then? No. Mike Riley. Watford and Wolves are also pushing for promotion and meet for the second time in a week at Vicarage Road. Lee Probert has that one. It’s almost like the authorities want a busy Monday morning working through paper work.

Looking further down the list for some of our old favourites – Trevor Kettle has Bristol Rovers and Port Vale, Steve Bratt has Swindon and Northampton and Uriah Rennie has Bury v MK Dons.

Andy Hall has Rochdale and Notts County on Tuesday night – that’s the fixture he postponed and drove home without telling the visiting team. As if that’s not bad enough they now get to see him in action after a long trip to Manchester through the rush hour.

Photo: Action Images

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