Mike Dean insists you will not find any splinters in his backside because there will be no sitting on the fence this season. Not in his columns for Mail Sport. Not on Sky Sports's Soccer Saturday.
Though as recently as last month he was part of the PGMOL fraternity - the Premier League's most famous referee-turned-VAR - his job now is to judge his former colleagues. If one of his mates messes up, he will say so.
'I have no choice,' Dean says. 'Otherwise you lose all credibility. I've not been kicked out of any WhatsApp group between the referees because there wasn't one.