Referee Mike Dean showed his 100th red card in the Premier League when he sent off Ashley Young in Manchester United’s clash at Wolves on Tuesday.
Dean is the first referee to reach the landmark, with no other official having sent off more than 67 Premier League players.
The Wirral whistler has overseen more games in the competition than any other referee, 477 to second-placed Martin Atkinson’s 373, and combines that longevity with a tendency to hand out cards at an unusually high rate.
Here, Press Association Sport takes a statistical look at Dean’s top-flight career.
Seeing red
Mike Dean gives Manchester United’s Ashley Young, right, his marching orders (Nick Potts/PA)
Dean is clear of the field by an extraordinary margin in terms of red cards – virtually 50 per cent ahead of the second-highest tally, shared by Phil Dowd and Mike Riley.
Among his current Premier League colleagues, Atkinson is closest behind Dean having sent off 58 players, with Andre Marriner the only other active top-flight official over 50.
The margin owes something to Dean’s game tally, having been part of the PGMOL Select Group since 2000, but having overseen 28 per cent more games than second-placed Atkinson his record of dismissals is still striking.
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Dean has shown 0.21 red cards per game – nine referees in Premier League history have a higher mark though that number includes George Pearson, who took charge of just one game in the inaugural 1992-93 season and produced a red. Pearson aside, Andy D’Urso has the highest average at 0.28 while Dean leads the way among active top-flight referees.
Unsurprisingly, Dean also leads the way by a significant margin in yellow cards with 1,731 – around 38 per cent clear of second-placed Atkinson’s 1,256.
The pair are among only five referees to surpass 1,000 yellow cards in the Premier League, along with Dowd, Graham Poll and Riley.
That equates to 3.63 bookings per game issued by Dean, the seventh-highest average in Premier League history and leading the current group.
Again, those ahead of him include some small sample sizes – Peter Willis and David Crick oversaw a solitary Premier League game apiece, dishing out five and four bookings respectively, while Gary Lewis showed 24 yellow cards and one red in six games.
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