The EFL have appointed Craig Pawson to referee the League Cup final between Arsenal and Manchester City on Sunday 25th February.

The competition’s governing body announced on Tuesday that Pawson would head up the refereeing team for the final.

Gary Beswick and Adam Nunn will be the assistants on the day, with Graham Scott as fourth official.

Neil Swarbrick is the VAR official, just as he was in Arsenal’s semi-final matches, supported by Peter Kirkup as the Assistant VAR as the EFL continue to trial the video review system in the competition.

The appointments should be a good omen for Arsenal.

Pawson has only refereed one match between the two finalists previously, last year’s FA Cup semi-final. Arsene Wenger’s side came out 2-1 winners that day.

Plus, the team won their last match under the referee, 5-2 against Everton.

He’s also never shown a red card to an Arsenal player in any of his 11 matches (but he sent of Idrissa Gueye in that Everton match), nor given a penalty against (or for) them.

There is some bad news though. The 4-0 to Liverpool at Anfield and the 3-2 to Manchester United in 2015/16 were both refereed by Pawson.

In fairness, Arsenal were terrible on both occasions, and I doubt any referee would’ve changed that.

Let’s just breathe a sigh of relief that it’s not Mike Dean or Anthony Taylor. Pawson is actually one of the best referees in the country so hopefully we can focus the actual football.

That’s a good thing, right?