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45 year old Select Group referee Phil Dowd of Stoke has been given charge of the Leeds United v Gillingham game at Elland Road this Saturday, by the Football League.

Once described as the “worst referee in the Premiership” by an unnamed Premership manager (per Paul Jewell), Dowd, nonetheless, spends most of his time refereeing top flight matches. You will have seen him on TV this season; he reffed the Liverpool 5 v 2 Havant match in the FA Cup, the Chelsea 4 v 4 Aston Villa game and Everton’s memorable 7 v 1 Sunderland win.

He has only officiated at two League One games this 2007-08 season - and one was a Leeds United match - the 3-1 away defeat to Carlisle United! During this match he produced six yellow cards, five against Leeds; Jamie Clapham, Matt Heath, Andy Hughes, Tresor Kandol and Dave Prutton! Surely the Football League realise it’s too late to stop Leeds getting into the play-offs?

This season Dowd has brandished the yellow card 119 times and the red card 10 times. Incredibly, neither is a record! In 2005-2006 season in 46 matches he produced 183 yellow cards, an average of 3.98 per game! In 2001-02 in just 29 games he showed 13 red cards - that’s a sending off every 2.23 matches! His best individual tally must be 10 yellows and 2 reds in the March 2006 meeting of Liverpool and Everton at Anfield. Despite everything at stake on Saturday for Leeds and Gillingham let’s hope his cards stay in his pocket.

The other officials will be A. Butler and M. Scholes and the fourth official will be D. Whitestone. Whitestone is a regular Leagues One and Two referee, although he hasn’t been in charge of a Leeds United game this season. He has managed to clock up the same number of red cards as Dowd in just 75% of the number of games and his tally of 93 yellow cards is a bit tasty for just 31 games in charge.

Let’s hope Dowd has a safe match - we don’t want to be losing more players to suspensions with the play-offs coming up.

The results were announced last night for the the Leeds United Annual Player of the Year Awards. The fans’ awards were decided by the votes of visitors to leedsunited.com.

Leeds United Player of the Year Awards 2007-08

2007/08 Goal of the Season 
Winner: Jermaine Beckford for Leeds United v Hartlepool on 8th Sept 07

2007/08 Fans’ Young Player of the Year 
Winner: Jonny Howson 
Runner-up: Paul Huntington

2007/08 Best Contribution to the Community 
Winner: Casper Ankergren

2007/08 Fans Player of the Year 
Winner: Jermaine Beckford
Runners-up: David Prutton, Jonathan Douglas

2007/08 Players’ Young Player of the Year 
Winner: Jonny Howson 

2007/08 Players’ Player of the Year
Winner: Jermaine Beckford

Goalkeeper Caspar Ankergren was awarded the Contribution to the Community Award. Casper said that if he’d known throwing a lighter at Swindon Town fans would win him an award he would have thrown something heavier! (Or maybe he didn’t!)

Jermaine Beckford, who has already won the League One Player of the Season Award, and is the only Leeds United player in the PFA League One team of the season enjoyed a clean sweep of the Fans’ Player of the Year, the Fans’ Goal of the Year, and the Players’ Player of the Year. Jermaine was last seen leaving the awards dinner heading off to IKEA looking for a new trophy cabinet.

Jonny Howson enjoyed a double win after receiving both the Fans’ Young Player of the Year Award and the Players’ Young Player of the Year Award.

The Mirror is suggesting that Leeds United and Nottingham Forest are both chasing Doncaster Rovers‘ 30 year-old, Welsh, left-back Gareth Roberts.

Roberts signed for Donny in July 2006 and has made 75 starts for Rovers during that time. Apart from most of November and December 2007, Roberts has been a first-team regular starter in an impressive season that has seen Doncaster sitting in the runners-up spot with just one match remaining in League One. Having just lost Republic of Ireland left-back Alan Sheehan to a red card, following his return from a two match suspension for ten yellow cards, Gareth Roberts’ record of just three yellow cards in all competitions will obviously impress Gary McAllister. Roberts played against Leeds United both home and away this season.

Obviously Rovers are the team that would suffer most if Leeds Utd got all 15 points back in arbitration and their Chairman, John Ryan, has made a bit of a fool of himself with disingenuous, whining, intemperate public outbursts over the prospect of Leeds United having the points returned. So whatever the outcome the prospect of Ken bates and John Ryan agreeing a deal over Roberts is remote - as is the prospect of Roberts wanting to leave Rovers for Leeds if Rovers are promoted and Leeds fail at the play-offs.

This may be the Mirror’s attempt to kick off the silly season early!

Is Gareth Roberts an improvement over Alan Sheehan or Ben Parker?

Leeds United have just announced that Elland Road will play host to a friendly on Saturday 2nd August, 2008.

No opponent has been announced yet but last season it was Premier League Wigan Athletic and hopes are that it will be another visit from a Premier League team - Manchester United Rowdies, Liverpool Red Sox, Chelski? Perhaps not

Join our RSS feed and make sure you find out the name of our opponents as soon as possible.

All other friendlies so far announced have been away matches as is the usual pattern. This year’s overseas tour will be in the more traditional Republic of Ireland - last year was the more far-flung German tour  - so its Guinness rather than Bavarian lager this summer!