Cambridgeshire official Darren Deadman is the man in the middle as QPR travel to Nottingham Forest this weekend. Rangers have never won at the City Ground, and have never lost with Deadman in charge, so something has to give.
Nottingham Forest v QPR
Referee: Darren Deadman (Cambridgeshire)
Assistants – McCallum (Tyne and Wear) and Unsworth (Manchester)
Fourth Official – Grunnill (East Yorkshire)
Respect
• noun - a feeling of admiration for someone because of their qualities or achievements.
Well I am sure you all joined me in having a little laugh at Frank Lampard last Sunday. He has spent years perfecting that “I’m so hard done to” look but to be fair he brought it out with some justification at Anfield. How on earth was that a sending off? Another disgraceful decision from Mike Riley – the first of many every season. Riley is still seen by the authorities as one of our top officials and is unbelievably the mentor for football’s nemesis Stuart Attwell which may go some way to explaining his arrogance in the face of his own stupidity and incompetence. You don’t have to loo far to see where he gets it from. Riley is in the Styles category of being universally detested by everybody except the men in charge – everybody can see that Webb, Wiley and Halsey are good referees just the same as they know Riley, Styles and Attwell are poor ones so why can the authorities not see this as well?
These are the same authorities that three years ago suspended our referee this Saturday Darren Deadman for two weeks for the heinous crime of permitting too many substitutions in a pre-season friendly between Luton and St Albans. Send a player off for nothing at all and then let another off with a karate kick to the back and you get to come back next week but let St Albans make seven changes instead of six in the middle of July in front of 200 people and you get suspended. Strange world.
Nottingham Forest on Saturday will be Deadman’s second QPR fixture this season. His previous fixture with us this campaign was a 1-1 draw at Bristol City and while the result was a positive one the early sending off of Emmanuel Ledesma did not help our cause and he failed to impress on the day. His rating of three out of ten in that match sees him lying 25th in this season’s referee league.
Referee Darren Deadman (Cambridgeshire) 3 Whilst he wasn't what I'd label a homer, he did after all book Sproule for diving in the box towards the end, he looked to be just itching to be given the chance to card Ledesma, and it appears normal practice for Bristol defenders to be able to climb on top of Blackstock for the whole 90 minutes with nary a word. He managed to book Rowlands for a perfectly good tackle and gave a throw to us when apparently Ledesma had committed a foul that Deadman, looking straight at it, had no problem with until the lino half a pitch away saw something nobody else did. LFW Bristol City Match Report
In total this season he has shown 86 yellow cards (3.44 a game) and seven reds in 25 games. Ten of those games have been in the Championship with 41 yellow cards and four yellow cards coming in those games. By some strange twist he had us against Bristol City last season as well – this time at home, this time a 3-0 win. He was awarded six for his performance that day and finished 15th on the referee league. Overall last season he showed 101 yellows (3.15 a game) and five reds in 32 games including one booking in his last Nottingham Forest game – a 0-0 home draw with Swansea in January 2008.
Referee: Darren Deadman (Cambridgeshire) 6 His record seems to suggest a more laid back, less fussy approach this season than last and that proved to be the case. Allowed a lot of physical contact to go unchecked and for the most part that was welcome, although the decision to allow Adebola free reign to physically attack Lee Camp in the first half was a strange one and almost cost us a goal. Hard to argue with the four cards shown. LFW Bristol City Match Report
In 2006/07 Deadman was the referee for our 2-0 home win against Hull City where he again earned a mark of six, this time good enough for tenth on the table.
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
In total in the three QPR games he has refereed Rangers have had nine players booked and one sent off compared to seven bookings for opposition players. The R’s have won two and drawn one with Deadman in charge.
Elsewhere the Sheffield derby has been given to a favourite referee of mine Mark Halsey, I just hope his avoidance of cards and wish to play advantage whenever possible does not backfire on him in a match where players are likely to take a mile with every inch and get away with as much needle as they can. Another excellent official Alan Wiley has Leeds v Millwall on Monday. At the other end of the ability scale everybody’s favourite incompetent bum Andy Hall has Scunthorpe v Cheltenham and our old mat Stuart Attwell has Grimsby v Exeter.