Premier League 2018-19: Twitter reacts to Mike Dean's appointment as referee for Arsenal vs Tottenham clash

Mike Dean was in charge of Arsenal's game versus Brentford in the Carabao Cup Third Round this season
Mike Dean was in charge of Arsenal's game versus Brentford in the Carabao Cup Third Round this season

The Premier League has announced the officials for this weekend's English Premier league games. And interestingly, Michael Leslie Dean (often known as Mike Dean) will officiate the much anticipated North London Derby between Arsenal and Tottenham at the Emirates Stadium.

Some Arsenal fans as well as Spurs fans are not particularly happy with the choice of Dean for Sunday's game, citing the Englishman's propensity to be biased against Arsenal as their reason for discomfort.

Dean has not taken charge of any Premier League game the Gunners have been involved in this season. However, he was in charge of the Carabao Cup match between Arsenal and Brentford.

Arsenal eventually went on to win that game by three goals to one at the Emirates Stadium.

Here are some tweets from fans at the appointment of Mike Dean as the centre referee for Sunday's game:

There have been mixed reactions from Tottenham and Arsenal fans alike. The Spurs fans have been referring to the incident last season, where Dean supposedly made some questionable calls on Arsenal goals against Tottenham at the Emirates Stadium. The Gunners ended up triumphing by two goals to nil.

After the match, Tottenham boss Mauricio Pochettino was quoted as saying in the Independent UK:

“If you analyse the game, until we conceded the goal the team was doing well, and I think we were better than them,” he said. “But in the end there was a massive mistake like this: it was not one mistake, it was two mistakes.
"It was not a foul and it was offside. And in that moment, all our plans changed and of course it effected the team. Then we conceded the goal quickly, for 2-0. To come back in this kind of game is always difficult. If you analyse, when you play a team at the same level, who scores first always has more chance to win the game.”

According to world football.net, Mike Dean has issued nine yellow cards against the Gunners in 2017 alone. He was in charge of the games that Arsenal played against Stoke, Tottenham and West Brom.

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Edited by Musab Abid