MIDDLESBROUGH 1 BURNLEY 0
BURNLEY 4 CHARLTON ATHLETIC 0
Funny things stats, you can use them any way you want. In mid-December Burnley’s were a wonderful example. Before the Middlesbrough game they’d lost just one in 11. They were unbeaten in the last 8 away games.
After the Middlesbrough defeat the stats were 6 games without a win and in these 6 games just three goals and one of those was a gift from a Cardiff defender.
Before the ‘Boro match there was some shock team news. One stunned supporter, a tad unkindly perhaps, wondered if Sean D had had a mid-life crisis. The standard 4-4-2 formation was abandoned for a 4-5-1 with Vokes dropped and Gray alone up front. Into the five-man midfield came Marney. The changes made sense but it was to no avail as Middlesbrough went top with a simple goal they scored far too easily early in the second half.
‘The goal given away would qualify for the softest goal of the season competition,’ said my pal Chris who was there. He added that Middlesbrough is particularly good for bookies, tattoo parlours and fast food joints. Burnley he added were probably the most stylish team in the division – when they are going sideways. It was clear that this was another performance when wing play, crosses, penetration and pace were sadly missing. Chris returns to sunny Tasmania shortly, lucky fella.
Most, if not all managers, ignore messageboards and fans’ forums. After this defeat the comments were harsh in their criticism of a poor display. Even normally reserved and positive people were critical after what they had seen. But the one or two calls that Sean D’s time was up were just ridiculous and unwarranted.
For articulate and positive comments, always supportive and considered, there is no better messageboard poster than JDRobbo but even he was moved to frustration. ‘Absolutely unacceptable display, a frightening and worrying display… set up for a 0-0 and allowed Boro to pass through a box filled with all eleven Burnley shirts to score the winner. Stop parking the bus, roll your sleeves up, make some positive changes and let this talented squad have a bloody good go.’
At QPR Burnley had just two shots on target; a statistic that was repeated at Middlesbrough. That’s just 4 shots on target in 180 minutes football. The word woeful on its own did not do this justice. It is not rocket science, supporters suggested, that if this continued there would be no top six-place let alone promotion. Watching Burnley for the last few weeks has been damned hard work, others added.
‘We lacked guile in the final third,’ said Sean Dyche afterwards but reminded fans of the spell of games when there had been 9 wins out of 12 and even in the promotion season there had been a spell of 12 games with just three wins.
Earlier in the evening at soccer school in Leeds grandson Joe in his Burnley kit had collected his trophy for winning the penalty shoot-out competition. A CLARET WIN IN LEEDS would have made a nice headline in the Yorkshire Evening Post.
How many books about Brian Clough are there? I bought another one and what a gem it is; I Believe in Miracles, the story of Forest’s first title win and then the European Cup win the season after. Told through interviews with just about every member of the team it is a wonderful and entertaining read. Eccentric or genius, he defied all the rules of so-called ‘good’ management to become one of the great managers. Many of those who played for him still can’t work out how he managed to take them to such great heights. His one-liners are legendary: this one on Garry Birtles – ‘Garry the half time Bovril was better than you today.’
He once turned up at Turf Moor in mid-week unannounced. It was a time when security was non –existent and you could just wander in through doors and entrances at will. The place was empty, not a staff member in sight, other than groundsman Roy Oldfield chugging up and down the pitch with his mower. Clough had arrived to talk about a couple of young Burnley players but the only person he could find was Roy on the pitch. He heard the mower and wandered over to see him. ‘Where is everybody? He asked.
‘Come and ‘av a brew,’ Roy invited him and they did exactly that chatting about life and football until Clough wandered off.
Saturday was grandson Joe’s big day, mascot at the Charlton game just a few days after his ninth birthday. It is traditional that grandparents are allowed to indulge their grandchildren. And then when we are fatigued and had enough we can send them home. It’s a perfect arrangement. He was agog when we told him that the training session they get as part of the package would be on the pitch because the gym was unavailable.
‘What was the best bit of the day?’ we asked him on the way home.
‘Training on the pitch,’ he said beaming. Isn’t that every little lad’s wish if he’s a Burnley supporter; to be able to take a ball out onto the pitch in your Burnley kit while all the team are out there as well. And for grandson Joe it really happened.
‘Who did you talk to in the dressing room most?’
‘Tom Heaton… and I gave Matt Taylor a high 5… Andre Gray asked me who was going to win… Burnley I said 3-0.’
‘Did you see Joey Barton?’
‘Yes he was in the laundry.’ And we didn’t really know what to say to that.
With the deal you get 4 comp tickets so Joe’s other grandparents came along as well. They too live in Leeds so it was their first trip to Turf Moor, indeed any football match for years. As the first half wore on, Dyche having replaced Darikwa with Lowton and Jones with Marney, with little of note in the first 40 minutes, I attempted to say it wasn’t always as bad as this. Those around us who had been at Middlesbrough assured us they were carrying on where they had left off.
But how a goal can change things and when Scott Arfield scored just minutes before half-time you could feel a ton weight being lifted from their shoulders. From that point on the crowd too came alive and as rain swirled down and around us, in the second half we sat back and watched Burnley rip Charlton apart with another Arfield goal, an Andre Gray goal and one from Sam Vokes.
The forecast had been for temperatures nudging 60 and Saharan Dust arriving from the south. Instead we got Burnley weather, cold, wet and windy. But the longer the game went on the football produced in these horrible conditions was exemplary. It was a performance that the players needed, that Sean Dyche needed, and for sure the supporters, to send us on our way home for Christmas with renewed optimism and faith and ready to get stuck into roast turkey and Christmas pud.
The midfield display of the season so far came from Dean Marney. Has he really been absent for nine months, we asked, as he covered every inch of the field in a superb performance; his energy, drive, tackling, covering, prompting and probing all there in a MOTM display.
The tackle of the season came from Barton in the first half. Charlton were by no means as bad as some folks made out and until Burnley scored they were for good spells the better side. A moment came in the Burnley box when we thought hell they must score as the ball came nicely to an incoming Charlton player who with on an on-target shot must surely have scored. His foot came back, we were ready to groan, but then out of nowhere in came Barton with a magnificent block tackle the sound of which boomed round the ground. If a tackle can change a game, then this was it. On any other day Barton would have been MOTM but for Marney.
Miss of the season came from Gray in the first half when the ball came to him just a couple of yards out in a plum position by the far post; and we waited for it to rip into the net and burst out the other side. He surely couldn’t miss. It ended up nearly hitting the Cricket Field Stand roof. To spare his blushes he was deemed offside anyway.
Save of the season must surely have been Tom Heaton’s split-second, reflex, instinctive stop in the second half when he got down like a cat to keep out a shot by the left-hand post. He had already made one stunner in the first half from a 100mph, twenty-yarder that he tipped over the bar and then in slow motion slowly keeled over backwards to add a bit more style and colour to the save.
Trickle of the season, if not the decade, was most definitely the Sam Vokes goal. Until this point you’d wondered if he would ever score again as luck seemed to be deserting him and headers had flashed just wide. After a bit of neat interplay involving Lowton the ball came to him somewhere near the penalty spot. It came to him awkwardly but with a piece of deft skill he flicked the ball and slowly it began to roll towards the corner of the goal. It had maybe 12 yards to travel and as we ticked off each yard it slowed down even more. With two or three yards to go it was assuming slow motion speed so that surely the goalkeeper must scoop it up comfortably. But no: the scrambling ‘keeper who must surely have thought it was going wide could only look in horror as it trickled over the line so slowly that we all held our breath and our eyes widened, and then we whooped and hollered as it dribbled over. It was like someone in snooker potting the final black with an inch perfect shot that agonisingly just makes it into the pocket. In the old days the mud would have stopped it in its tracks. The players mobbed him.
Kung Fu kick of the season came from Andre Gray after his goal. Corner flag posts these days come in for serious abuse from players who have scored as they race over to the corner and take a flying leap at the post and give it a good whack with the sole of their boot from three or four feet up in the air. After his first-half miss, Gray took this to a new level, racing over, taking the flying leap and not just whacking the post, but removing it clean out of the ground. He’s had a barren spell. Who could blame him?
Nice moment of the season was provided by Joey Barton whilst he waited to take a free kick as a Charlton defender lay in the penalty area receiving treatment. Joey whiled the time away passing the ball back and forth to the folks in the front row of the lower James Hargreaves with a huge smile on his face. If there is one moment in his Burnley career that will cement his cult-hero status, then this was it.
And mascot of the season must surely be grandson Joe Riddell. Of course we all dote on our grandkids. Of course we all think ours are the best. Of course they can do no wrong in our eyes. Sure it costs a pretty penny, but in this case I’m putting all that aside and looking at this objectively, scientifically and statistically. Joe has been mascot three times now over the last three seasons and Burnley have won every game that he has done this. That must surely be an unbeatable stat.
Just fewer than 16,000 people braved the weather, with just a handful from Charlton. Not bad for Panic Saturday, the last Saturday before Christmas when husbands are dragged away to the shops for last minute bargains.
The street festival kicked things off in fine style. But the one salutary experience: as we waited with the mascots in the corner of the Jimmy Mac and the James Hargreaves, was getting a taster of what the disabled must endure in bad weather in that exposed corner without shelter. Every so often it’s a topic on the Claret websites and by coincidence it was mentioned in the evening on the Claretsmad Messageboard. It is without doubt a thoroughly unpleasant experience and totally lacking in anything resembling real shelter and protection. Those people must have been drenched by the end of the game.
‘Who was Jimmy Hill?’ asked Joe when the headline came on the TV News and up came a grainy black and white picture of a bearded bloke with the distinctive chin.
‘Someone who changed football in so many ways,’ I told him. ‘He was a player, a manager, a chairman, an ideas man and a TV man. People like me grew up with him and MOTD on our TV screens years ago when football was in black and white.’
He was even a fully qualified referee. Three points for a win was his idea and every footballer in the land, especially those with bank balances to make an ordinary man’s eyes water, owes his wealth to him and his campaign to have the footballer’s maximum wage abolished over 50 years ago. The years slide by don’t they, and when it came up that he was 87. I had to blink and muttered, surely not.
But time drifts by without us really noticing so that here we are and another Christmas comes round once again with a thumping win and a feast of second-half football. Here’s wishing a Merry Christmas to one and all.