Merseyside’s Mike Dean, the man in the middle for both this season’s derby matches between Everton and Liverpool, has been named the Premier League’s most talked about referee.
The Wirral-born official – whose own football allegiances lie with Tranmere Rovers – took charge of Liverpool’s 5-2 win over Everton in December (a game that proved to be Marco Silva’s last in charge of the Blues).
While Martin Atkinson was originally assigned the return fixture at Goodison Park, following a three-month shutdown due to the coronavirus, the first match back in Project Restart for both Blues and Reds went to Dean who presided over their goalless draw.
A study, conducted by online gambling company BetVictor, entitled ‘The Referee’s A…’ has monitored fan discussions on Twitter from the very beginning of the season and found that Premier League referees have been mentioned over 30,000 times across 2019/20.
Dean, who on average receives 270 posts about him per game, is the most talked about referee, making up for around 20% of the conversation, with around 70% about him being negative.
Some 66% of tweets about the 52-year-old that showed some form of emotion were that of surprise.
Chris Kavanagh has received the most negative posts about him at 92% while 85% of tweets about Martin Atkinson were negative compared to 70% for Dean.
Graham Scott brings the largest percentage of sadness to fans at 21% of tweets that show some form of emotion, while 32% of tweets about Jonathan Moss’s performances were that of anger or disgust.
Michael Oliver is one of the best thought of officials, with Anthony Madley and Peter Bankes also seeing generally positive reactions.
Click here for a full breakdown of results
