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Andy Murray worked his socks off to become world number 1, Blackburn lost again to stay in the bottom three, the first snowfalls in the north, Leonard Cohen and Jimmy Young passed away, Joey Barton was signed off with stress and left Rangers. Brexit now Trumpit, but the biggest shock, M&S will close 60 stores and the new Toblerones will have fewer sticky-up bits.

Sean D doesn’t blow his own trumpet, he doesn’t do elation, never has, chooses words carefully, never overplays things, hyperbole is unknown, pretty much the total opposite of the new US President. He’ll credit others, usually the players, but after the Palace game even Sean D, whilst as undemonstrative as ever, allowed some of his satisfaction and pleasure to show through. He talked of the outstanding and superb mentality that created the winning goal.

The previous week we’d seen one of the most astonishing goalkeeper displays of all time by a Burnley keeper when Tom Heaton defied Man U over and again. Colin MacDonald in the 1958 World Cup, Adam Blacklaw away against Reims in the very early 60s, Harry Thomson away at Naples in the mid-60s were probably the yardsticks for truly great goalkeeping up until Heaton’s gymnastics at Old Trafford. But afterwards, true to fashion, Dyche didn’t really single him out for any special praise or go into meltdown with effusive tributes.

But after the Palace game, for once, his jubilation just kind of crept out; the mask slipped just a fraction. He just couldn’t help it. Barnes had come on in the 85^th minute and deep into injury time sent supporters into raptures with a goal that was reminiscent of the one he scored against Wigan in the previous promotion season. It was the scenario we thought might have been in the script at Old Trafford in fact, but it wasn’t to be. But it most certainly happened at Turf Moor. Donald Cooper described the winning goal:

     When Dean Marney, Gudmondsson and Barnes combined to score that 94^th minute winner we were watching poetry in motion. Artistry created by masters of their profession. From out of nothing, while defending against a determined opposition seeking a last gasp winner for themselves, Marney’s quick thinking and vision triggered a 30-second masterpiece of soccer science. No amount of transfer money can buy a goal like that.

The game plan had worked to a treat, the choice of Barnes over Gray might have been a hunch, but it turned out to be masterful. And Ashley Barnes: is there just a touch of the Steve Kindons about him, the sheer size and power of the man; picture him bearing down on you at full speed, motoring like a juggernaut, frightening. This is a beast of a man that knows how to put himself about, a throw-back to a different era perhaps. Sean D deserved a bit of a preen and the warm glow of a bit of inner self-satisfaction. The Dyche legend grew just a little more.

A win that will go down in folklore, he said and surely in that was the clue to how good he must have been feeling, though doing his best not to be too histrionic. Klopp maniacal fist-pumps, high jumps in the air and uncontrolled demonstrativeness is not his style. Mourinho melodramatics are mercifully absent. You can’t even imagine Sean Dyche being sent to the stand; grappling with a spectator on the floor a la Nigel Pearson – heaven forbid, unthinkable.

What a glorious feeling to see us ninth, even after the Sunday games that’s where Burnley stayed for the next two weeks with 14 points and two players in the England squad, Heaton and Keane. Comparisons with the previous excursion into the Prem were inevitable when the first ten games were near-barren and the seeds of relegation were planted in those early weeks. But after game 11 this time round there was the foundation for survival thanks to the home form.

The stats people had noticed it was an age since we took a lead and lost, and months since any away team scored at the Jimmy Mac end. The perennial plucky underdogs might, we wondered, be on the edge of becoming something a little more than that. Barnes’s return made a huge difference, Gudmondsson was a revelation, Vokes was developing twinkle-toed skills with every new game, Mee and Keane simply immense, Marney like a fine wine getting better with age, Defour sheer class whilst he is on the pitch; and Heaton, the icing on the cake with real claims to be England’s number one.

So just when you couldn’t wait for the next game it was the international break and kicking heels time for us rank and file. But Joe had another game and this time it was Saturday morning and not the usual Sunday. Alas the lads received a lesson in the cruelty of football (just like Liverpool, Everton and Palace) that you can have 80% possession and 20 shots and still lose to breakaway goals and an unbeatable opposition goalkeeper. But off came Joe, well pleased with his cuts, bruises and covered in mud and well versed in the arts of grappling at corners.

Saturday morning: like back in the 70s when the school team always played on a Saturday before teachers got stroppy and worked to rule and stopped being ‘nice’ when they realised that saying “no” sometimes gets you what you want, in this case a decent pay rise. But part of the not being ‘nice’ included saying we’ve had enough of giving up our Saturday mornings doing football and as far as I know it’s now a rare thing these days.

Under the watchful glare of the irascible, plump, old Head, Jack Prince, I ran our junior team at Horsforth St Margaret’s for several years. If you thought Bob Lord was a tyrant then Old Jack was worse. He was only about 5’ 4” but glared at you with narrow eyes and a cig dangling from his lips and he smoked anywhere inside the school when it pleased him. You could follow his trail round the school by following the little piles of cigarette ash on the floor. Every decision was his and the symbols of his iron rule were the ten sets of classroom door keys. I’m sure it pained him to hand them over in the mornings and we had to personally hand them back every evening; there was no asking someone else to do it.

On the one occasion I entered his room before hearing the word “enter” I was soundly reprimanded for my sin. Apparently Bob Lord did just the same according to someone I met who worked in his meat factory. Anyway, as Jack cursed me the ash from his cig fell off the end and plopped with a sizzle into his cup of tea. I was straightaway cussed for that as well.

We’ve probably all met someone who with one stare can set us into a dither; like Andy Lochhead used to give opposing goalkeepers the mean look and set their knees knocking, and there was one particular teacher there who turned to jelly just thinking about Old Jack and who continually for good measure forgot to hand in her keys at home time. With the bravery of youth I suggested to Mr Grumpy that he could solve this by fastening the keys to a piece of elastic so that when she unlocked her door she could just let go of the keys and they would fly back to his desk. Like Bob Lord he had no sense of humour at all; not even a flicker of mild amusement crossed his face. In fact he went red in the face with wrath and I thought he was going to have a heart attack. It was my one and only attempt at being light-hearted with him and I remember waiting for him to say “you stupid boy” like Captain Mainwaring.

The head of another school ran the famed Pudsey Juniors set-up in the area, a club that at one stage was almost a feeder for Leeds United and a couple of my lads joined this club. Years later working on Roger Eli’s book the name Cowley cropped up again. Roger too joined Pudsey Juniors with Alan Cowley one of his early mentors and it’s funny to think that I might well have watched Roger playing as a kid. Only one kid I ever taught went on into the professional game, Dean West, and as an 11-year old he stood out a mile from the rest going on to play over 350 games at Football League level. The right wing trio he made up with Glen Little and Paul Weller at Turf Moor was often a joy to watch. I can still see the 30-yard screamer he scored at Stoke City.

With all the fuss about West Ham’s stadium going on at the minute, it made me appreciate a little more just what a good old traditional football ground we have at Turf Moor. We might have our grumbles every now and then; the roofs are not much use in really bad rain when the wind is blowing up your trouser leg. The facilities for the disabled are poor. But over and again in the media it is described as a traditional old-fashioned football ground and all the more intimidating for that. Walk from the town centre and then along Harry Potts Way to the ground and it’s a proper football walk, shoulder to shoulder with fellow fans, past the pubs, and fast food outlets, along the club frontage and then to the crowds filling the Park View pavement and then funnelling into the ground.

West Ham’s new stadium is turning out to be a bit of a disaster and Paul Fletcher has said umpteen times it should have been demolished and rebuilt if it was needed as a football stadium. A Stokie wrote disparagingly about it. I read the piece by the Stoke guy, Anthony Bunn, and could identify with everything he said. If things are right, then where a team plays, feels, smells and sounds like a football ground, he argued.

     ‘Narrow streets, terraced houses, pubs, the bustle and the floodlights; ah the floodlights standing proudly as a civic beacon, I’ll never lose the buzz of seeing the hazed splendour of proper floodlights in the distance…. But I wouldn’t give a stuff if I never returned to the London Stadium ever again.’

The community feel has now gone, he says, whereas at Burnley that’s a huge part of the location of the ground, nestling in the streets and fitting like a piece in a jigsaw puzzle. West Ham have now lost their identity he writes. The London Stadium feels more like a part of a Theme Park and inside is so sanitised that cleaners pick up the ketchup sachets as fast as they hit the ground. Away fans are so far away from the pitch that the opposite end of the ground looks a mile away. ‘The nearest goal looked like it was in another post-code.’

The West Ham fans he spoke to say they hate it. The old ground was truly representative of the area, the authentic, good old East End, a real pie and mash ground. But the new ground: ‘a glorified fruit bowl sat in the middle of nothing, the new gaff the football equivalent of going in a brothel and asking for a hug.’

The Donald Trump election TV coverage on the actual night was almost as entertaining as the final day of the transfer window and Jim White. In fact I kept waiting for Jim and his yellow tie to put in an appearance amongst the cartoon graphics. What emerged was that Trump by virtue of a Scottish mother is eligible to play for Scotland. His idea of a wall to keep the Mexicans in could easily be adapted over here. There is a certain attractiveness about the idea of building a wall around Blackburn. The new guy (his victory said to have been predicted by Nostradamus and the Simpsons) could surprise us all; let’s face it, is there anything more satisfying than a really good trump.

Reaction to his win seems to have bordered on the hysterical but look how good Ronald Reagan turned out to be despite huge reservations about his capabilities when he was elected. “You need a strategy to handle the Russians if they attack,” said a condescending aide.

“I have a strategy,” he replied as he saddled up his horse. “We win, they lose.” The aide slunk off, his ego crushed by those four simple words.

Bill Shankly once said much the same on the eve of a European game in the days long ago when I was at college and did a teaching stint in Liverpool. Bootle docks it was and I still shudder at the thought of it. Football back then in the 60s was still very much a simple game; the only instruction was to pass the ball to someone in the same colour shirt, or as Clough told his players ‘treat the ball with care like you would your girlfriend.’

What are your plans, the press guy asked Shankly.   “It’s really simple son,” said Shanks in that characteristic gravel voice. “We win, aye, they lose.”

All Burnley fans were probably hoping to see either Heaton or Keane, or even both, in the England team to play Scotland at Wembley. Common sense, however, said that Southgate would pick neither of them for this game despite Heaton being currently by far the top goalkeeper and Stones decidedly iffy at times. But Southgate is nothing if not cautious and conservative and all the same familiar faces were in there. With a 3-0 win under his belt Southgate though could feel well pleased although England were hardy dazzling and better Scottish finishing might well have produced a very different result .

Nicola Sturgeon, meanwhile, said she would not be accepting the result of the England match, it was not in Scotland’s best interests, and would be demanding a replay.

BURNLEY 3 CRYSTAL PALACE 2

UKIP decided to raffle the party leadership, Bill Wyman turned 80; it was the last Brown Bin collection day in Leeds. Killer Ladybirds were invading East Lancashire. The Trump, with just 7 days to go, was only one point behind the Clint in the US election polls. Halloween became yet more unbearably over-the-top and at posh houses scary kids were offered something from the cheeseboard. And what a wonderful autumn it has been, walking along scuffing up the mountains of crisp, dry leaves on the pavement (come on; don’t tell me you don’t do it too).

At 3 0 clock on Saturday afternoon we were at Old Trafford and part of a 75,000 crowd but it wasn’t the stadium and its magnificence, or the galacticos, or the heaving super-store, or even the snarling Mourinho that provided the most memorable image of the sheer scale of the club on show; it was the sight of a line of SIX identical, glistening, immaculate, dazzling, white mowers that appeared immediately after the players had left the pitch. I swear they’d all been given a polish. And behind them was a small army of groundstaff in matching track suits with forks attending to the precious, barely scuffed pitch. It was quite surreal. It was the first time I’d seen synchronised lawn mowing.

At 9.00 the next morning, in utter contrast, I was with young Joe at Garforth Cricket Club where a small junior size pitch had been marked out in the outfield. It was a cool, grey morning with rain threatening, the pitch was uneven, lumpy, covered in flattened worm casts; but you couldn’t fault the effort that had gone into making a useable surface on which these 9-year olds could play.

Two groups of parents and grandparents huddled in their separate groups most of us thinking how nice it would have been to have had an extra hour in bed on this drab morning. For the away team, Farsley Celtic, it was a drive from one side of the city to the other and an 8 o clock departure from home. It was a journey from the glamour of Old Trafford to football’s grass roots where small groups of dedicated adults give up their time to run these teams for nothing other than the satisfaction of bringing these kids on. And it was a cracking game as well, the odd thing being it was just like watching a Burnley rear-guard action as Farsley repelled wave after wave of Garforth attacks.

With minutes to go Farsley went ahead via a penalty. It looked like a Dyche performance; resilient, gritty and determined would win the game. But then another penalty was awarded this one to the home side. And that was it – 1-1. It was ironic that penalties decided the game after Clattenburg ignored at least 56 Man U claims the day before. The two sets of parents and grandparents shook hands with each other. I think Joe and I felt kind of smug. “I bet nobody else was at Old Trafford yesterday,” said Joe. “Nobody else has Burnley season tickets.”

But when Joe said his favourite player was Pogba, I told him he ran the risk of seeing Christmas cancelled. Joe’s forte by the way is the sliding tackle which on a day of mud like this one gave him extra satisfaction. The ball and opponent might be five yards away but in he goes revelling in the sheer pleasure of it. The great Denis Law when he became a commentator, having a brew in Roy Oldfield’s room at the Turf, told Roy that as a player he loved the mud and snow and sliding about; it made him feel like a kid again, he said.

One kid stood out playing for the Garforth side. Whatever ‘it’ is that makes a footballer, he had ‘it.’ Strong, well built, balanced, instant control, able to beat his marker, powerful running, awareness, bravery; he had them all. The old football coach in me (from years back running school sides) wanted to find out who this kid was but I didn’t bother. I’ve no idea what his name was, but I wondered if one day, ten years on, he would make the grade.

It all starts here, I thought, at grass roots, on cold early Sunday mornings when devoted parents and grandparents ferry these kids round and then stand shivering on the touchline flattening the worm casts, getting muddy shoes and desperate for coffee. Huh, and there’s still January and February to come, I thought.

If the Celt’s kids gave a defensive masterclass there were different opinions about the memorable display at Old Trafford. Whilst some said this too was a defensive masterclass others differed citing the 37 shots that Man U had and the number of clear chances they made inside the box. How it could be a defensive masterclass when they got into the box so often was the question. Against Liverpool earlier in the season on the other hand you could count on one hand the touches Liverpool had inside the area. Goalkeeping masterclass was a universal verdict at Old Trafford and individuals performed above and beyond the call of duty; but 18 blocks, the woodwork twice, miracle saves, Ibrahimović’s misses, on another day they could in fact have been on the end of a tonking. But they weren’t and it was one of the great, great, extraordinary, unforgettable days to be a travelling Burnley fan.

And how true is this?

In football as in life some people start off with an advantage. Others have to fight for everything but there’s no doubt which category Burnley Football Club belongs to. They are natural ‘fighters’ and it seems that no odds are too great for them to overcome. They’ve proved this time and time again throughout their history and they’re still proving it.

     ‘When Burnley were relegated there was a large body of opinion that felt that this small town club was finished a football power by the Clarets have taken them little time in proving them wrong by bring First Division football back to Turf Moor. Burnley’s population is only 74,000; there is no smaller town in the division. The attendances are moderate, the financial problems are unending, the club has had to sell its best players and top class players who come onto the market are reluctant to move to Burnley when they can choose a big city club. Yet Burnley succeeds because they are arguably the best run club in the country.

       These are words that could have been written last week, but they weren’t; they were written in 1973 by Peter Higgs in the celebration banquet programme after the ‘72/73 promotion. The club’s history is remarkably consistent inasmuch as it has strived incessantly to reach the top and when it falls down, it gets back up again.

Crystal Palace: known as the Glaziers until they changed their nickname to the Eagles in 1973 with apparently Malcolm Allison having something to do with this. I love the name ‘Crystal Palace’, it’s different, very unfootball, very ‘south’; not a name you’d find in Batley, or Heckmondwike or Ramsbottom. Turf Moor on the other hand; a name that’s dug out of the rough earth, northern, gritty, tough, it does what it says on the tin and harks back to the days long ago of peat cutting when life was hard and a daily struggle. This part of town also hosted a horse race track years ago when a military garrison was stationed in Burnley to keep unruly workers in check. Thatcher did much the same in Yorkshire but used the police.

The military however, the Fifth Foot and Mouth, needed somewhere to stable the officers’ horses and somewhere where they, the gentlemen, could race and pass away the time whilst rank and file were out shooting the peasants. So, a race-track developed and in time even a small pavilion. Prior to all this it was an area for grazing livestock and horse sales.

The good news was that Defour was fit to play but Sean D said a strange thing though that there were no guarantees that the Belgian would ever meet the levels of physicality and fitness needed in the Prem. In seven games he had yet to last the full 90 minutes. SD was also honest enough to say that whilst this latest promotion side performed less effectively than the previous one, it had amassed the most points. This group was the more solid, he added; in other words it ain’t as attractive but it sure can defend.

We came down the stairs in raptures afterwards. What a game… best game we’ve seen for years… it had everything… my nerves are in shreds… just a few of the comments. Clichés perhaps, hyperbole maybe, Cheshire cat grins on every face – unless you were from Palace.

But the minute’s Remembrance silence impeccable, then a game to savour, a result to relish, ninth in the table, Dyche like the rest of us wallowing in the satisfaction – and hundreds who left early expecting this to stay at 2-2 missed the finale of all finales and a goal that was sheer Premier League class from start to finish; from out of the Burnley area into the back of the Palace net in just seconds. A goal of blistering pace, one end of the field to the other, a slide rule pass, a pin point cross and a goal thumped home with a force that almost broke the net from Ashley Barnes.

At half-time you might have thought that we were doing another ‘Liverpool.’ You score twice in the first 15 minutes with swift and incisive moves, one a poacher’s goal from Vokes who stabbed it home from about 6 inches, and the other from Gudmondsson firing a bullet shot from 20 yards that the goalkeeper could only parry so that it looped over him and bounced into the net. And then you keep the buggars out. It was working a treat with Burnley at last looking like a Premier League side. Yes Palace were good with Townsend on form but Burnley gave as good as they got and created some delightful moves. At last we looked at home in this division.

But the second half was totally different. Now it was Palace dominant with sporadic breaks from Burnley; although admittedly on another day might have seen them go 3-0 up but the wily Pardew had changed things and Zaha, average in the first half, now began to run riot. His superb cross was hammered home giving Heaton no chance. The inevitable equaliser came when Lowton handled another cross that was whipped in. Benteke anonymous in the first half but now having a fine second half, stroked it home.

We groaned and remembered the scoreline of two years ago when Burnley had gone 2-0 up and lost 3-2. It’s happening all over again we told ourselves and resigned to our fate sat grim and stony-faced and waited for the inevitable winner. Palace dominated, poured forward, pinned Burnley back, moved forward with pace and menace; it seemed just a matter of time before Burnley wilted and conceded. We clung to the hope of a 2-2 draw and a point, disappointing though that might have been. Zaha was running riot, Benteke inspired by his goal; Palace seemed just too good.

But Dyche made his brilliant substitution. Those who wanted Andre Gray were disappointed for on came Ashley Barnes, Dyche explaining afterwards that he was brought on as a hunch, that the game seemed right for him. Not many might have backed the hunch but how it paid off. Out of the relentless Palace pressure the ball broke clear out of the box. Marney raced out, Dyche super-fit, to take the ball onwards for a stride or two and then to Barnes inside his own half; he played a perfect through ball to Gudmondsson racing away ahead of him to the right. Barnes sprinted forward to keep up and get in line with the Icelander by now steaming down the right to collect the ball. The Icelander whipped it over low and hard and from 8 yards Barnes was on hand to slam the ball home. Blink and you missed it; leave the ground with five minutes still to go and you sure as hell missed it. Some of these folks came running back in to see the replay on the concourse TV screens. This was a truly magnificent goal, a goal of exquisite, wonderful quality, a goal that left us delirious at the sheer unexpectedness of it deep into injury time.

Surely to God that’s three points we told ourselves, surely that’s it, blow the whistle for God’s sake; but Palace came back in the minute remaining. Zaha again whipped a ball over, it broke out to the edge of the box and we held our breaths as Townsend drove a beauty of a shot from 20 yards that slammed against the post. But instant prayers were answered as we uncovered our eyes; it hadn’t ended up in the back of the net and ricocheted away to safety. Near heart attacks are parts of football.

Barnes was ecstatic and disappeared in the scrum of players just below us, all of them as joyous as he, celebrating his return from the months of injury nightmare he has had, the on-loan Flanagan leading the charge. Who says loan players don’t show passion for their new club?

England manager Southgate was at the game but this time it was Mee who took the eye rather than Keane leaving some pundits to suggest that a pairing of Mee and Keane at England level might be no bad thing. Heaton added to his list of saves. Gudmondsson MOTM was a revelation. Defour was just class but again left the field well before the end signalling that he needed to come off.

Last season at Leicester Ranieri was saying they were dilly dong games. Dyche was now saying this one was ding dong. It’s the new language of football. The whistle went, the roars of acclaim reached the sky, the points were won, the football Gods had been with us, and we knew we had seen something very, very special.

So too was the exquisite steak and the crisp baguette at the Kettledrum and it seemed fitting that we drove home against a background of bonfire night bangs, explosions, rockets, starbursts and sundry fireworks as if the world was celebrating this stunning victory with us.

The guy from Luanda, Angola, who had sent super-polite emails to directors offering to buy the club for £300million, was now no doubt doubly disappointed by their lack of interest. At least he wasn’t a prince from Nigeria.

MANCHESTER UNITED 0 BURNLEY 0

China ordered its citizens to prepare for WW3. Bill Wyman turned 80. Jimmy McIlroy was 85 and the tributes flooded in. Bobby Vee passed away. His hit record Rubber Ball about bouncing back could almost be a Burnley anthem. Jimmy Perry the genius writer of Dad’s Army and other shows died. Man United were thumped 4-0 by Chelsea and we were due there next. But the Daily Mash had downgraded Mourinho from Special One to just adequate.

     When Burnley play Man U it always takes my mind back to days long gone. I’m back in the days when my father used to drive the little Ford we had up through the Cornholme Valley and we’d watch the champions’ team, Jimmy Mac and Jimmy Adamson, and we could go to Old Trafford and win 5-2. At home we could beat them 5-3 and in that game the goal that stands out to this day is a Walter Joyce 20-yard header that rocketed in; in an age when a goal from a 20-yard shot was difficult enough with a ball that weighed the same as a small cannonball.

Close my eyes and I’m back at Tod Grammar School and I spent one season actually going to all the home games at Man U there with a lad called Tim Greenwood and another called Podge. It was a season of Dennis Viollet, Albert Quixall and a young Bobby Charlton and we’d get the train from Tod and then the bus to the ground along Deansgate. The allegiance to the Reds was short-lived though and trips to Burnley became the norm. But the dashing Albert Quixall, dazzlingly blonde, was probably my first football hero, quick-witted, sharp and deft; he always stood out from the rest, not quite Denis Law but almost. As the years went by he ended up at Oldham when Jimmy Mac was manager there and Ken Bates was chairman. By then, ageing and filled with the aches and pains of football, he was going through the motions I suppose and Ken Bates bemoaned the fact that he was always either ill or injured when an away game beckoned. But at Manchester United he was electric, played for England and stood out a mile.

Close my eyes and I’m back in the Milky Way coffee bar in Todmorden and next door was Parker’s Record store an Aladdin’s Cave filled with those old-style 78s, LPs and CDs. For several years that coffee bar was the centre of our universe where we went after school and talked of Juke Box Jury, Burnley, Bobby Vee, Adam Faith, Frankie Avalon, Elvis, the Drifters, Ray Charles and Roy Orbison. The milk shakes I drank in there would have floated a small battleship. I can see us now, satchels strewn all over the floor upstairs in the café in the corner by the window smoking our first cigarettes, Ed Cockroft, Jammy Fielden, Colin Walker, Winston Sutcliffe, Kathryn Collinge and Pamela Crabtree. We really did believe ‘you’re never alone with a Strand.’

The bone shaking Morris 10 that we had was retired. A rather swish black 1954 Ford Zephyr arrived next with a front bench seat and a steering column gear change. It guzzled up the petrol and so it too went. Sad: this was a car that had heads turning in provincial Todmorden where most of the mills were still standing and cobbled streets lined the three valleys. It was still an age where you could play football across the street without any fear of being flattened by traffic. The replacement was the Ford Prefect that was staid, reliable and just chugged along.

After the season trekking to Old Trafford, the Turf Moor bug bit and three or four of us would pile into the Prefect and head up the valley through Cliviger and then along by the old Fighting Cocks (now a swish Italian) and the Kettledrum. We alternated between the Longside or behind the goals. The first time I saw Jimmy Greaves and barrel-chested Dave Mackay was when they came with Tottenham. I was awe struck. Mackay did something we’d never seen anyone do in the warm-ups before. He showed off. He strutted his stuff. He did tricks with the ball; a few dozen keepie-uppies, landing it on the back of his neck, controlling it on his thigh, balancing it on his head and then something that we’d never ever seen before. He received a practice pass and kicked it back in such a way that when it bounced, it then spun and rolled back to him. Now that was magic. It might be commonplace today; even kids can do it, but back then, by an away player in front of a hostile crowd, it was unheard of. Mackay was announcing hey I’m here, I’m special, and I’m better than you lot. But they weren’t and we beat them 2-0 but I loved Dave Mackay from that day on.

Jimmy Greaves in a later different game did something memorable, something so subtle, so clever (so obvious in hindsight) that I remember it still. It was a Spurs throw. Blanchflower took it and Greaves was several yards away facing him with Brian Miller breathing down his neck behind him close enough to make you wonder if he was glued to him. With a hardly discernible gesture Greaves indicated with a finger on his left hand that Blanchflower should throw the ball just slightly to Greaves’ left. This he duly did whereupon Greaves headed left as the ball was thrown and was away round the side of his marker in a flash and blur that left Miller floundering and gawping at the empty space in front of him. Before you knew it Greaves was in the box and had scored with a ploy that was so simple but devastating.

For years, as the 80s and 90s went by, we believed that playing teams like Man United would never ever happen again, but here we were at Old Trafford for the third time in 7 years. On the first occasion Coyle had just left the ship and taken his crew with him. The club, supporters and the town sneered at his previous honeyed words. But the deafening response at Old Trafford from supporters during that game was emotional, powerful; the roars were of defiance, the sense of togetherness in adversity was overpowering.

On the second occasion we had dazzled and played with such dynamism and flair that it remains impossible to this day to think that we actually lost. It was the game when Ings played out of his skin; he was untouchable, uncatchable, with feet so quick he was sending opponents dizzy. Van Gaal had got Man U competing again in a messy kind of way and they had a team filled with stellar names. Van Gaal had his flow charts and ring blinders, pie charts, slide rules, set squares and folders. Sean D had the back of an envelope. It was the game where we all sang, “We only cost three quid,” as we ran rings round them.

It was the time Burnley had this ghastly strip in all silver, a kit so awful you just shook your head in disbelief that someone actually put it on the shelves in the shop. Yet, despite this abomination they produced a first half display that oozed class, slick passing moves and pace, the latter provided by Trippier and Ings who produced a goal that was simply stunning. The move came down the right in a blur and the cross that came over was met by a diving Ings and the ball rocketed home. Yet despite playing like Barcelona, Burnley somehow contrived to lose 3-1 because of poor defending at corners and the usual bad luck in front of goal. It was a display that produced a wonderful accolade: ‘If Burnley are eventually relegated, it will be to a standing ovation.’ It turned out to be prophetic when they won the last game at Villa and we cheered them off the pitch with lumps in our throats and memories in our heads of goals that might have been and games that should have been wins, when we came away thinking just how did we lose that – like the game at Old Trafford.

This time it was Master Joe’s first trip to the Theatre of Dreams, although at the moment dreams might not be quite the right word. Theatre of sullen faces might be more appropriate since Mourhino’s team in the league had performed worse than any that Van Gaal ever produced. The annihilation at Chelsea was simply humiliating; Mourhino’s face a picture, bereft of any answers and looking like a busted flush. But the young lad was in awe of the place, the size, the scale, the statues, the milling crowds and the numbers of foreign faces. The whole place reeks of being a money factory. The statue of Charlton, Law and Best is iconic, but my mind went back to when I went all those years ago; it could just as easily have been Charlton, Viollet and Quixall. Nostalgia was doing overtime. I knew Podge was now in South Africa; but of Tim I had no idea.

In the mid-week cup game Man U had salvaged some respectability by beating Man City; they hadn’t played particularly well, Ibrahimovic had a stinker. In the back of my head thoughts were lurking that Burnley might just pull off a backs-to-the-wall 1-0 win but then we saw the United team sheet and all those million-pound names. Dear God I thought just how do you compete against this lot unless they have a bad day?

There was the faint possibility that Ashley Barnes might figure in the squad and we wondered what his role might be; sit him on the bench next to Mourhino to wind him up was my first thought. The perfect scenario would be to come off the bench in minute 85 and score the winner in minute 89. Mourhino had been playing the sympathy card all week in the press saying how he was lonely and marooned in his hotel penthouse unable to escape from the paparazzi waiting down below.

It was the Less-than-Special One that made the news during and after the game, his behaviour as bad as anything ever seen before. But the news that was the best news was the magnificent point that the Clarets came home with after a display of goalkeeping and defending that surpassed anything we have seen so far this season. Logically, a club like Burnley has no right to expect anything other than a defeat at a place like this. The Man U teamsheet was awesome with names so illustrious and costly that what else could you think other than how is it even possible we are on the same pitch. And before the game the announcer rammed down our ears that this was The Theatre of Dreams, the home of the greatest football club in the world.

But football doesn’t work like that so that we even harboured faint thoughts of stealing a win. What Burnley came away with however was a point, only one point but its significance so huge that it was like coming away with a win. In fact it could indeed have been a 1-0 win when one of the best chances of the game fell to Arfield but alas the shot went high over the bar. This was no exercise in parking the bus with a starting line-up of two up front with the return of Andre Gray later replaced by the bustling Ashley Barnes. Gray too might have nicked the win when he was through one on one but for a last ditch intervention.

The Holy Trinity statue stands outside the ground, Best, Law and Charlton, a magnet for the hordes of tourists that swell the 75,000 crowd week in and week out. You can barely move for them with their infernal selfie sticks and huge bags bulging with over-priced merchandise. 30,000 people pass through the shop every home game said the attendant as if we should feel inclined to be open-mouthed. But back at Turf Moor we could erect a Holy Trinity statue ourselves of Mee, Keane and Heaton. Their display of courage and determination was the best yet. There cannot possibly be a better ‘back three’ at any other club anywhere was the consensus.

37 Man U shots the stats said and 12 Heaton saves, the one that will go down in the annals of the club being the point blank from Ibrahimovic that had Peter Schmeichel tweeting that this was surely one of the best ever in the history of the Prem. It was a save so extraordinary that Heaton feared initially he had broken his arm. But the man is made of strong stuff; his arm is possibly bionic, maybe with Halloween supernatural qualities. Or maybe he is just Superman without the costume.

How many talking points did this game have; the penalty claims, the red card, the Mourinho histrionics, the saves, the misses, the woodwork, the Ibrahimovic bloopers, the close shaves, and to be fair the slick play and passing of a rampant Man U side that did all that could be expected except score. And above all what was referred to on MOTD as “brilliant Burnley.” If there has ever been a better 0-0 draw than this one in the Premier league, I’d be astounded. Thrills and spills, it had everything so that we sat with hands over our eyes sometimes, hearts in our mouth on others.

We almost lost count of the Man U penalty claims but when Clattenburg ignored strong Burnley claims for a shove in Barnes’s back, we knew that this was a game when he must have got up in the morning and said to himself: “today I am ignoring all claims no matter how strong.” In our little row of seats we couldn’t think of any other logical explanation.

“Sssssssh” the Burnley crowd kept hissing at the United fans as three silent sides of the stadium made it more like a church than a football stadium.

And we taunted them mercilessly: “you’re just a ground full of tourists.” Meanwhile the away fans sang, roared, chanted non-stop for the 90 minutes obliterating any tannoy announcements. After the game the enigma that is Mourinho went into the Burnley dressing room to congratulate Burnley and reportedly shook every player by the hand. This unfathomable man, the scourge of referees, and for whom the word unsportsmanlike could have been specially written, confounded us all with his magnanimous gesture afterwards, from crass to class. A sports psychologist would presumably have a field-day analysing him.

For Dyche what you see is what you get, and it was the fourth anniversary of his reign at Turf Moor. Four more years of the same success rate will do us nicely thank you.

BURNLEY 2 EVERTON 1

Chuck Berry was 90. A Good Housekeeping survey says the best mince pies and the best Christmas turkeys are from Iceland. Theresa May cracked a risqué joke in PM Question Time. Who will exit Emmerdale after the spectacular pile-up the nation asked? And at Southampton Burnley had run 113 miles.

Of all the stats that were churned out after the Southampton game that was the one that stood out. Burnley had run 113 miles and had in fact covered more miles than Southampton. But with their running Southampton had accumulated 34 shots. Burnley had just 6. It made you think. In the penalty area Saints had 46 touches, Burnley just 12. Exactly where were Burnley running to?

You wondered just how a side could run so much and do so little and it certainly wasn’t the running that had kept the score down to something respectable, it was Tom Heaton’s goalkeeping. The media raved about it the day after; the save from Austin’s fifth minute header was miraculous.

’34 attempts an astonishing figure,’ said Henry Winter. ‘The outstanding Tom Heaton prevented a complete rout.’

‘Embarrassing but for Tom Heaton,’ said another report.

‘A poor Burnley side,’ said the Express, although most papers wrote of how good Southampton were rather than being critical of Burnley.

Much was made again of the Boyd stats. He’s run the furthest this season of all Prem players. He’s made more sprints than anyone; fair play to him; but what’s the good of that in any player without pace and an end product? It’s as if his role now is one of damage limitation and it’s a negative role. Without Gray in the side and Darikwa not even on the bench, there was absolutely no pace anywhere.

Totally outplayed but Dyche was right to highlight the blatant penalty that Burnley should have been awarded. One photo showed Van Dijk’s leg clearly wrapped round Gudmundsson’s. It always sounds like sour grapes or clutching at straws when managers of any side talk of refereeing errors and penalties. But this one of Dean’s was bad, utterly bad and if there are moments that affect games, this was one of them with bells on.

Mention the name Everton and a whole bunch of memories come flooding back. They are a team that dates back to childhood and Uncle Arthur, a staunch Evertonian. Arthur had trials there and might well have made it but along came the war and that ended that. We often visited Newton le Willows, where they lived, regularly trundling down the East Lancs Road in an ancient Morris Ten, three gears, boneshaking and no heating. Further up the road lived another aunt and uncle, George and Mary, but George was a Geordie and another decent footballer.

Arthur used to give me all his Everton programmes and occasionally took me to a game; there’s a hazy memory of a game against Arsenal sometime in the 50s and the name Joe Haverty springs to mind, a pint sized winger for Arsenal, he was only 5’ 3”, whom the crowd barracked mercilessly because he had such a stinker that day. I can picture the Everton toffee lady who used to come round with a basket and lob sweets into the crowd. Today in our cotton wool world, it would be a health and safety risk. It was a time when wingers were expected to dribble past a man, get round them and cross the ball. Fine when it worked but when it didn’t and the winger looked useless he soon became the target for abuse and catcalls.

A game in the 70s at Goodison was only memorable because Keith Newton gave away a penalty when he raised his arms to protect his face when a vicious shot or cross, I can’t remember, was heading straight for his head. I thought of that when the Arsenal goal was allowed to stand the other week. Koscielny raised his arms to protect his face but that was OK the referee decided, assuming he even saw it.

But the game that made the biggest impression was at Christmas 1960, December 27. Burnley had lost the Boxing Day game at Turf Moor 3-1 in front of a 44,000 crowd. Ray Pointer got the Burnley goal. It was the team of Billy Bingham, Jimmy Gabriel, Bobby Collins and Roy Vernon. The next day we went to the return game and were part of a staggering 78,000 crowd. I don’t think I saw a thing from where we were behind one of the goals and Burnley won an improbable victory playing with a virtual 10-man team after Pointer (I think) shuffled about after an injury. Jimmy Robson scored twice and John Connelly in a 3-0 win that silenced the scousers when they had all turned up assuming this would be a win.

Over the years there have generally been good relations between the clubs although this was punctuated when Willie Irvine had his leg broken there in an FA Cup game; Bob Lord went mad in the boardroom afterwards and was asked to leave. As far as he was concerned Irvine had been deliberately crocked by Johnny Morrissey, a view that Irvine himself has always maintained. Afterwards Everton manager Harry Catterick pronounced that it was Irvine’s own fault, he’d been asking for it. Maybe that was what incensed Bob Lord. Hurt one of his players and the irascible old growler was instantly up in arms.

Tommy Lawton, Martin Dobson, Dave Thomas, Geoff Nulty and Trevor Steven all ended up at Everton although Dave Thomas went via QPR. Former director Derek Gill remembers the sale of Steven well. John Bond tried to take credit for a £25,000 add-on if Steven played for England, but it was all done and dusted before his arrival and the fee of £300,000 agreed plus the add-on was a Derek Gill initiative. Everton were a pleasure to deal with, he added.

At the beginning of the Bond season the club, largely due to the work of Derek Gill, was comfortably in the black, and that was even before the Trevor Steven sale. By the start of the next season, the sacking of Bond, the appointment of John Benson, the dwindling crowd, money evaporating; the place was in turmoil and discontented supporters were asking serious questions. It lead up to a very nice Derek Gill pie story which he called A Shortage of Pies is No New Thing.

   ‘P for Plymouth day arrived and we set off with five players making their debuts and the ground in a most unusually subdued state. Having once told the local press that I would never feed them a bad line I went back on this undertaking on a little matter which seemed harmless at the time but had its amusing consequences. Like my own boys, John Jackson’s son preferred to watch the matches with the real supporters and in his case he enjoyed standing behind the goals where one of the delights was to indulge in a half-time pie.

     Amongst the more important issues discussed at board meetings was the seriousness of the pies being either cold or even unavailable on some occasions. Nobody dreamed that this was a matter of interest to the press but we were actually aware there would be more than a passing interest in the size of the crowd after all the sensational publicity we had attracted during the week (the sacking of Bond). Clever sods that we were, or rather I, with the chairman’s connivance, decided that the miserable gate we expected would fuel the discontent still further.

     As if to prove we did not get everything wrong, the gate on a perfect day was a derisory 4,644.

     Aghast at how low this was it was decided to add an extra 2,000 and to report the gate to the press as 6,644. Now: as luck would have it pies were short that day and John’s lad and Derek’s lad were unable to obtain their half-time treat. Such was the dire game; a pie would have been the undoubted highlight. Afterwards, on learning that pies had run short the chairman duly spoke to the catering manager to let him know in no uncertain terms that every penny was vital at the club and to enquire as to why there were so few pies and why had they run out. We may presume the poor bloke was told in no uncertain terms to buck his ideas up. But: the catering manager looked at him for a moment, thought, and then slowly explained that the gate of 6,644 was more than they had expected and would be the reason why the shortage of pies had occurred. Game, set and match to the catering manager.

Somewhere in this there must be a moral, wrote Derek.

Everton, one of those clubs a bit like Fulham, they’re just kind of there drifting along, nothing to really dislike, nothing objectionable, they don’t upset anyone, trophies few and far between in recent years, had gone four games without a win. Burnley, we felt, could surely not be as poor as they had been at Southampton. There was therefore that slight frisson of anticipation that maybe we could get something from this game. The last time they had been to the Turf it was Samuel Eto’o that gave a striker’s masterclass of such brilliance you could only applaud and then with supreme irony that was pretty much the last time anyone heard of him again.

Matchday: a beautiful autumn day with the sun shining on the ground, trees changing colour, a beautiful drive across the moors from Hebden Bridge; a drive that’s usually beneath drab skies or even in low misty cloud but this time the landscape at its best with views for miles.

There was no Boyd as well as Defour. The running stats would be slightly down then we agreed. But this time the running paid off and Burnley ‘did a job’ on Everton as they had done with the other car-minders from the city. Uncle Arthur, an honorary scouser, always said that the worst thing that ever happened in Liverpool was the invention of the locking wheel nut.

Everton and certainly Koemans might have argued that this time it was Burnley guilty of nicking stuff when they walked off at the end of the game with all three points. We knew the feeling; Arsenal did it to us a few weeks ago. Koemans said that football isn’t fair; but it remains a simple game, it ain’t rocket science, the team that scores the goals wins and Burnley’s 90^th minute winner certainly surprised and stunned us as much as it deflated anybody connected with Everton. And the nice thing was it was such a corker of a goal. Gudmundsson smote a terrific shot from distance against the bar; the bar was still twanging when it rebounded to Arfield maybe 12 yards away and he gleefully hit it home. Not the easiest of shots either coming to him on the half volley at just a slightly awkward height, enough to make it less than straightforward to control and hit cleanly. Arfield set off on his celebratory run at Olympic speed, but this time only to the halfway line to be buried beneath a pile of ecstatic claret bodies, one of them Flanagan doubly delighted no doubt from the other side of Stanley Park.

If improbable, unexpected, surprising, perhaps nevertheless it wasn’t quite astonishing because this is a Burnley side that we knew from the Liverpool game could provide this kind of result. They can be over-run, out-thought, outplayed even, but can still find a way to win. And it was exactly that kind of game when artisans can beat artistes.

Everton were slick, quick, filled with forward movement and panache. ‘Pleasing on the eye,’ as a former manager once said whose side now lies once again in the bottom three of the championship. For clear spells waves of attacks bore down on the Burnley defence, they could have been 2-0 up very early, but Tom Heaton was providing another goalkeeping masterclass. It was to everyone’s surprise when Burnley then took a first half lead following a delightful sequence of passes out of their own half, a fabulously clever subtle layoff, the ball caressed with finesse by the Icelander, a run at pace from Arfield suddenly in oodles of space, a shot on the run, a slight defection, a goalkeeper save and then a VOKES POKE, a superb bit of poaching and opportunism.

Everton equalised early in the second half, of that we will say little, better to say what was good about Burnley. At first we groaned, perish the thought but I did wonder at that point would we ever win again as Everton continued to pour forward. But Mee was outstanding, Keane was getting the plaudits but Mee was again the unsung hero along with Ward at full-back. Lukaku was more Lukakwho.

Another save by Heaton, a tip-over from Bolasie’s 20-yarder, was another worldy; Bolasie cost them £20million. For that we could build a new Cricket Field Stand, on two other occasions Everton just a whisker from scoring. We willed the time away to hang onto the point, a point that would have seemed a bonus at that time, but then out of nothing, came triumph. Gudmundsson struck, the bar quaked, Arfield lurked, and that was that, the ball nestled; the earth shook. This was Custer’s Last Stand but with a happy ending.

Piggy in the Middle at the Hare and Hounds Todmorden on the way home, that’s a burger with cheese and tomatoes and a thick layer of pulled pork, oh and chips, recommended. At home a couple of recorded episodes of Victoria, that’s Downton with crowns on; then a few compliments on MOTD. What’s better than a day when you win?

Incredulous might be a slight exaggeration but elation certainly reigned supreme, Burnley were up and running again – and knew where they were running. And more good news from the channel as well; the Russian fleet did indeed sail through but it seems that their giant carrier is just a rust bucket with loos that don’t flush, prone to breakdowns and was accompanied by a tow-ship just in case. Ten points nestled in the bank, just ten points behind the leaders, and not even the end of October. We could all sleep a little easier in our beds.

11: Thank Goodness for Harry Hill

SOUTHAMPTON 3 BURNLEY 1

The pound was tumbling. Creepy Clowns were stalking the streets. Putin was recalling people back to the motherland. He was threatening to shoot down any interfering US planes. Petrol prices were on the up. And Marmite had run out on supermarket shelves.

Trump and Clinton were still at it, hammer and tongues, the Trump tongue lashing out at all and sundry. Clinton serenely smiled and said when others aim low then she would aim high. And England were as depressing as ever in Slovenia.

It was the 950^th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings, BBC news announced that Nicola Sturgeon would be initiating another Scottish Independence referendum and that a large gorilla was on the loose at London Zoo. Unfortunately they got the pictures mixed up and for Nicola Sturgeon showed the gorilla happily munching on a snack.

Against that background it was a relief to get back to Burnley and the Premier League battles. If the world outside was looking decidedly wobbly, then a Times report named Burnley as the friendliest place; an oasis of warmth in a gloomy north. It seemed all to do with neighbourliness, how many people could you count on in times of need. In the olden days the test was could you leave the back door unlocked all day and could you nip next door and borrow a cup of sugar.

Back then it might even have been a footballer who lived next door; they might even have delivered our milk like Jimmy Mac or Arthur Bellamy.

I’d been to see Roy Oldfield again after a summer break. Jim Thomson had come round as well; he was the club commercial manager in the Orient Season when Roy was groundsman. The official attendance that day was given as 15, 686 but anybody who was there has always thought it was more than that.

Jim reckoned it was maybe nearer 22,000 as things approached pandemonium level outside the ground with long queues and milling crowds with serious dangers developing. Jim recognised that things were approaching crisis point and it was decided to open the large gates. Open them too much and there would have been a mass stampede so two policemen opened them just enough for one or two people at a time to get through. A whole lot of people therefore got in for nothing. And meanwhile the decision was made to delay the kick-off. Brian Miller was not best pleased, said Jim.

Roy remembered that after the game Brian Miller hugged and squeezed him so tightly that he feared his ribs would be crushed. Just one corner flag was recovered, the nets were ripped and the police ordered all inside doors to be locked at the tunnel end to keep the fans from getting inside into the corridors in their eagerness to share their celebrations with the players in the dressing room.

“We could hear them all banging on the doors to be let in,” said Roy.

Earlier in the season, with the club penniless, one of the directors saw that there were now five footballs up on the Bob Lord roof and footballs weren’t cheap. It was decided they must be rescued. Jim was commercial manager but that made no difference, he was instructed to erect the scaffolding and get them down. Jim did all kinds of odd jobs as well as avoiding people calling to have their bills settled.

“Tell them I’m not in,” he’d say which was exactly what Bob Lord used to say only a few years earlier.

Anyway: as well we know, it may not be the tallest stand in the world but nevertheless that is one helluva high roof. Scaffolding on wheels was duly trundled out and erected by Jim and a couple of apprentices long before the days of Health and Safety and mandatory tin hats and training days about how to climb up a ladder.

Jim looked up and uttered just two words, “Bloody hell.” Then he added a few more, “No way am I going up there on this rickety contraption.” But he did… just the once and swaying about in the breeze and nearly ill with vertigo retrieved one ball. The apprentices called out, “We’ll move the scaffolding along while you are up there and you can get the next ball.”

“Oh no you won’t,” he called back down and inched his way back down the fragile contraption and said a silent prayer when he reached firm land. It was at this point that Director Bernard Rothwell appeared.

“You got them all then,” he asked whereupon Jim said no he only had the one and there was no way he was going back up again.

“Bernard looked at me and told me I was soft, amongst other things,” said Jim, “and said he’d go up himself. And he did. When he got to the top I couldn’t believe that he actually got off the scaffolding and climbed on the roof and threw the balls down and all the while I’m thinking hell he could go straight through the roof.”

Roy Oldfield too had his own share of adventures with scaffolding on wheels, this structure the one that was used in the gym with its high ceilings and bulbs that needed changing every time players took accidental pot shots at them and scored a direct hit. He hated it but did allow himself to be wheeled about by the apprentices from bulb to bulb when enough of them needed replacing to warrant the ride of death with Roy clinging on for dear life and shouting at the likes of Phil Cavener and his mates to slow down before he fell off.

“It was a long drop,” said Roy, “and those daft lads thought it was a huge joke while I was up there hanging on for dear life.”

“How times have changed as well,” said Jim. “Today you can’t get near the players, there seems no connection, no closeness; no real contact between them and fans apart from the odd exception. Back in the 70s when we played as many as 9 of us used to meet up every Monday for a drink somewhere and we’d always mix happily with the supporters. Most of us lived in or near the town so we were always being invited to open this, or present a prize somewhere or just make an appearance, and we never refused. It was the captain, Martin Dobson, who sorted them out and organised a rota so that we all had to take part. There’d be a list of names and when it was your turn there was no refusing, it was expected of you, you just did it and enjoyed it, unless you had something really important that took priority but that was rare. We went round the supporters clubs and there was never any ‘us’ and ‘them.’ There was something most weeks. But now: when do supporters get the chance to meet, spend an evening and chat informally and really socialise in the week on a regular basis?”

“Meeting them in the pubs and clubs we actually made some decent friendships with supporters and they’d tell us where they stood on a matchday. When we ran out or in the warm-up we’d look for them and give them a wave. Do you see that anymore?”

It was a Sunday game for Burnley and in mid-October against pundits’ predictions they still weren’t in the bottom three. The Division was propped up after 8 games by Sunderland, Stoke City and Swansea. Bookies and hacks had indicated that Dyche was one of the favourites for the vacant Villa job. You wonder where they get this stuff from; they didn’t even approach him.

The last league games between Southampton and Burnley in Southampton had certainly favoured the home side but Sporting Life guru David John was optimistic about Burnley’s chances even though Southampton were unbeaten since the middle of September in all competitions; manager Claude Puel had got them organised and Austin was scoring goals again but nevertheless he saw Burnley creating problems and would certainly be no pushovers. Dyche’s side was evolving all the time he argued, had a fine attitude and a display close to that which they gave against Arsenal would make them a tough assignment. Steven Defour and Jeff Hendrick were steeling up the midfield with drive and energy. Defender Michael Keane was the newest hottest talent and attracting covetous glances from other clubs. Tom Heaton was a class act. Their solidity at the back was a tough nut to crack with one of the best goals-against records in the division, just 9 goals conceded.

The game was on SKY in the afternoon but first there was the small matter of Master Joe playing for Farsley Celtic Colts under 10s in the morning. Farsley have a great set-up having been ‘reborn’ in 2010 after the ‘old’ club went into administration. A tidy little ground covered on two sides, an all-weather pitch and two adjacent training areas, one of them another full-size pitch, plus an indoor playing area. The youth set-up is hugely busy and superbly organised with teams that start at under-10 and go right up through the ages. The social club serves Growlers (Yorkshire pies) and mushy peas. What more could you want on a cold wet Tuesday night when it’s training for the Colts? For Clarets in Leeds, Wilson’s Pie Shops in and around the city are highly recommended having won several prestigious awards. Their Jiffy Pork Pie van is a regular at Leeds Rhino home games. Imagine driving a pie van for a living; some blokes have all the luck. Way back in history, pie shops were the original fast food outlets. And the old nursery rhyme – four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie – they really did used to put live birds inside a pie for a laugh and then when the pie was opened out they flew to amuse the diners.

The Farsley Colts game was in a drenching downpour that lasted all morning, cold rain as well with no shelter other than umbrellas. All of us were soaked and shrammed, none more so than the lads playing their hearts out and getting frozen to the bone and coming off shivering uncontrollably and looking like mudlarks. This was a long, long way from Premier League billions; and while Burnley fans were heading towards Southampton and the glitz of the upper echelon, we were at the very bottom rung of the ladder in the mud, or maybe ever lower, grass roots stuff, where it all starts with volunteer coaches and team managers giving up their nights and weekends to get it all organised, and parents and grandparents devotedly turning up to support the lads. I remembered how I did this for 12 years on a Saturday morning running the school team. They deserve a medal. Then, with that level of cruelty that only comes with the capriciousness of English weather, as soon as we got home and Joe into a warming bath, the rain stopped and there was blue sky.

At Southampton, Dyche like the rest of us was baffled by Dean not awarding the penalty when Gudmondsson was brought down in the box with the score at 0-0. Yes it might well have affected the course of the rest of the game; but it wasn’t given so that after that the result of the game reached its predictable conclusion with a defeat that could well have been an absolute tonking if Heaton had not been in superb form, with one save bringing Gordon Banks in 1970 comparisons from the SKY team.

Where Southampton were slick and dominant, always a man in space for a quick forward pass, Burnley were pedantic and laboured struggling over and again to find anyone forward with an accurate pass. There was just the one forward, Vokes, so that time and again the ball simply went back to Southampton who mounted yet another attack. When a Burnley player did receive a pass it was more often than not played backwards. Incisive movements and quick forward runs were at a premium, pace was non-existent.

With the score at 0-0 at half-time you speculated that Burnley might somehow just scrape a point, it had that feel about it; hey they might just do it we wondered. For all their possession and dominance and despite Burnley’s poverty going forward, Southampton seemed to be having one of those days when chances went begging and Heaton was saving everything. Defour had gone off with what looked like a hamstring injury long before this. On came the young O’Neill.

But come the second half they scored with a scruffy scrambled goal from a corner and all you could do was humph and sit back and groan at the impotence of any Burnley response. And then the second was fired home following a corner and then a third from a penalty decision far less blatant than that which Burnley were denied in the first half. Later on, maybe Dean thought he had to redress his error and did indeed award Burnley a penalty for an obstruction on Mee in the box. Vokes converted. 3-1 and the commentary team optimistically decided it was now “game on.” But it wasn’t.

At St Mary’s 0-0 at halftime and holding on; so it was in Joe’s Farsley colts’ game but they ended up on the end of a 6-1 drubbing. The Harry Hill show consigned the memory of the games to the dustbin. Burnley still not in the bottom three and maybe this was a game that was never going to yield a point. Others games might, we assured ourselves afterwards, especially at home.

Meanwhile Russia was provocatively planning to sail one of its fleets up the English Channel. The USA was raising its defence levels to Defcon 3 with comparisons being made to the Cuban Missile crisis of the Kennedy era.   But at Burnley there were bigger problems; away from home again they were not even mildly threatening; just how do they make a better fist of these games was the question.

It was a good job Harry Hill was on for half an hour with his new Teatime programme to lighten the gloom of the performance at Southampton. Hill, daft as a brush, is a bit like Marmite, an acquired taste; boy did we need something to cheer us up.

10: He was known as Burnley Dave

There have been, still are, and will continue to be many Burnley Daves. This one was from Skipton, moved to Bradford and sadly died in January 2010. He possessed a claret and blue scarf. And it is the old scarf that prompts this tale, for the scarf was precious and one of his proudest possessions.

Because he couldn’t drive he didn’t get to many Burnley games from Bradford and was in fact very much an armchair supporter. He used to sit at home on a Saturday listening to football with a Walkman plugged into his ear and he would wear a Burnley shirt with the old P3 Computer logo on it. He did in fact watch Bradford City sometimes, and was always there when Burnley were in town. Armchair based he might have been, but Burnley was his first love and passion, the scarf the symbol of that love.

Dave was born shortly after his parents moved from Bradford to Skipton in 1955 and his parents were prominent people in the town. His father was once Mayor of Skipton and his mother was a magistrate. Dave and his parents loved each other dearly and he too, like them, was a diehard socialist. However he didn’t really fit into his parents’ mould. His main interests were women, smoking, beer, and Burnley Football Club. Nothing much changed for the rest of his life. I guess there are lots of blokes like that.

Skipton was then a hotbed of Burnley support; it still is a claret town basically but support has perhaps diminished over the years since the 60s and 70s. He was only 5 when Burnley won the title in 1960 but grew to appreciate the great side of 65/66 and then the Team of the Seventies.

He was a bright lad and went to Grammar School but chose not to go to University; instead he joined the Inland Revenue and was posted to Bradford. Bus trips to from Skipton to Turf Moor ended and regular attendance faded. But he still had the scarf that signified his unending support for the Clarets. It’s an old scarf, hand knitted, woollen and it is most likely that it was his mother who knitted it. Many years ago mothers used to do that kind of thing lovingly for their sons if they were football mad, or knit garish sweaters if they were not, sitting by the fireside listening to the radio whilst fathers would sit and read the newspaper. Maybe she also knitted socks for her husband or even a cardigan. This was before television, and the comfortably-off family with dad smoking his pipe, sitting together in the living room in the evenings was the happy norm, or so the pictures in the history books suggest.

Dave married at a young age but didn’t wear the scarf to his wedding. That would have been frowned on and would most likely have annoyed his new wife. His wife was an officer in the Civil Service and they moved into a swish house in Wibsey a suburb of Bradford. Astonishingly his wife walked out on him after just 3 weeks leaving him with an unaffordable mortgage. But, he was always clever with money and dragged out the sale of the house until its value had risen and made him a tidy profit. That was 1-0 to Dave. Maybe his wife had said it’s the scarf or me, although that’s highly unlikely. But you never know.

For a wife to walk out on a husband after just three weeks is highly unusual even in today’s whacky world but back then was unheard of; wives back then were dutiful and obedient; there to be seen and not heard. (Just watch that old black and white film Brief Encounters.) Maybe his new bride by now after just three weeks was upset by the scarf seeing it as a symbol that he perhaps loved Burnley more than her.

That reminds me of the couple I knew who divorced bitterly with the wife proclaiming angrily, “You love Burnley more than me.”

And he (another Dave) was quick to reply, “Darling I love Blackburn Rovers more than you.”

Dave, with the scarf, moved into a back to back property that was his home for the rest of his life. At first he attacked the upgrading of the house with missionary zeal including new kitchen cabinets. He wasn’t sure where to fit them so stood them on the floor under a thin chipboard top. Twenty years later they were still there.

He and his great friend Hywel met in the early 80s and each with a broken marriage enjoyed having a good time in the pubs and clubs of Bradford and had many a scrape with the ladies, having many a successful tryst and getting into all kinds of bother with jealous boyfriends and husbands.

Armed with the gift of the gab and a new job, now a Chartered Surveyor, Dave had a fine reputation as a valuer but knew he was too much of a maverick to ever become a manager. By day he was a serious and diligent hard worker, in the evenings he was devoted to having a drink, a good time and lots of laughs. Maybe he wore the claret scarf to work when he travelled to London. Unlikely perhaps, but you never know.

At age 52 he took early retirement and was always at any game involving Burnley at Bradford City. In retirement he took up two hobbies, turning round the fortunes of Wibsey WMC and betting on the gee gees. He was better at the first than at the second. He loved sport and his small house was often filled with friends watching the Super Bowl or World Snooker.

For several years he had an Old English sheepdog, Bonnie, and used to comb her and save the hair hoping to have it all spun into yarn to make him a jumper. Bonnie died sometime in the early 90s before he had enough. He couldn’t contemplate throwing the clippings away and the great bag of Bonnie’s hair was still there in the house when Dave died.

In 2008 when his mother died his own end was not too far away. He developed an aggressive throat cancer, in next to no time struggled to speak and eventually had to be fed via a drip. He poured vodka into the drip because the burps tasted better he wrote, unable to speak. He died within 18 months.

Shortly before he died his friend Hywel made the journey to Burnley struggling in the thick snow to buy him a new shirt. The staff were just packing up but went out of their way to get the shirt but alas it was too late to get Dave’s name on the back. He loved the shirt and he was cremated with it in his coffin.

There were several games involving Burnley at Bradford in the 80s and 90s and Burnley Dave would always be there but the two memorable ones took place in September 2002 and March 2004 with Dave probably too ill by then to attend the latter. It was the one where Brian Jensen made so many world-class saves that Bryan Robson was shaking his head at the undeserved 2-1 Burnley win that eased relegation fears.

But it was the one in 2002 that had Burnley Dave and the rest of us who witnessed it absolutely open-mouthed. It’s all there in It’s Burnley Not Barcelona, that weird and wonderful season when scores of 6 and 7 were not uncommon, unfortunately the goals slamming into the Burnley net. Entertaining it may have been (for away fans) but grey hair in Burnley grew in direct proportion to the number of goals conceded.

I dug out an old copy off the shelf and re-read the account of that 2002 fixture when Stan was manager and the club lurched along with Stan and Barry Kilby trying to resurrect it from years of dross and penury.

‘The facts are these. On Saturday the sun is shining, the sky is blue; the ground is colourful and bright. Two sets of bedecked supporters are in good voice and there is a fine spectacle in prospect. We draw 2-2 which on the surface seems a good away result and we watch the game from the privileged comfort of a warm, food laden, drink filled Bradford City supporter’s corporate private box.

     Bradford score first, first half did we have a shot? Two Bradford players are sent off. The crowd is incensed. We score two and lead 2-1. In front of us sit the non-playing Branch, Weller, Armstrong and Payton.

     “You’re not playing then?” I ask which has to be the dumbest question of all time as they sit there in suits. I tell them I once taught Dean West.

     “Ah that tight buggar from Yorkshire,” one of them replies. Another says, as the conversation hiccups and stutters, that a couple of days earlier the club was close to administration.

     We began with the traditional hoofer style and got nowhere giving away the by now customary sloppy goal to give ourselves a challenge. The second half changes as the artists come on Alan Moore and Robbie Blake and we play football. Blake transforms things and Bradford are handily reduced to 9 men .It became a game we were on the way to comfortably winning 2-1 but then disgrace, embarrassment, derision set in roughly with about 15 minutes to go and every Burnley supporter left that ground baffled by what we did at the end. Burnley elected to play showboat keepball in their own half with the inevitable slip that gave the ball away and off Bradford go and score with 5 seconds left on the clock. We threw away the chance of three gift points by spurning the chance to play the ball in their half and going for a third goal.

     David Clark wrote: Clarets preference to showboat, play ridiculous keepball patterns and try to run the clock down led to their downfall snatching a draw from the jaws of victory. Totally unprofessional over the last 15 minutes in their conduct rather than putting the game well and truly beyond a depleted and dead-on-its-feet Bradford side left many Clarets in states of bewilderment and embarrassment. Amateurish tactics allowed 9-man Bradford to equalise in the dying seconds.

     You don’t need to ask what the Bradford websites say… everything damning that you would expect about the nasty, cheating, physical Burnley.

     If you were there you might remember that one man was sent off for leaving Papadopoulos in a heap on the floor but this was seen as diving by all home fans. The other was sent off when a Bradford elbow gave Dean West a fat lip. But no the Bradford folk said, it was the ball that did it not an elbow. When the final whistle went you’d have thought Bradford had won the FA Cup their fans went so wild. Burnley fans slunk away including me and Mrs T. At least though, we were full of top-notch chicken, salad and moussaka.

I like to think of Burnley Dave sat in the sunshine that day, there in the Burnley end rather than his usual home-end seat and wearing his claret scarf. Much as he might have come to support Bradford there is some truth in the notion that you never forget your first girlfriend so that his loyalty to Burnley always came first.

The controversy raged on during the following Monday with the Bradford manager fuming at Burnley’s alleged antics that saw two of his players sent off and Stan Ternent responding by telling him his comments were slanderous. Nicky Law duly apologised after Stan’s broadside. What he didn’t know was what we had come to learn, that dear old Dimi had legs like Bambi on ice, and was always falling all over the place. He could fall three feet outside the penalty area but somehow land in it just like the great Harry Potts used to do.

Say what you like but that was one eventful season. Predictions were impossible; you never knew how many cricket score games you would see. A gallows sense of humour was essential so that you could laugh at things like someone from Bradford who wrote: ‘Burnley is a bit like Keighley but minus the sophistication and culture.’

As people sorted out Dave’s house and belongings the scarf was found and lovingly gathered by his executor Hywel and his trusted friend of so many years. It was one of the first things he took home as a memento of a deep friendship. He knew so many people in and around Wibsey who all knew him as Burnley Dave and the Crematorium was packed to overflowing. Hywel visits his grave in Skipton to this day and still chats to him and sheds a tear. It’s what we do. Perhaps he chatted one day and reminisced about the time they went to the re-opening of a pub and there was a Hawaiian theme. Two 14-stone barmaids were dressed in grass skirts, but the landlord bizarrely was dressed as a French onion seller.

Hywel kept the warm and comfortable scarf until very recently but then decided that it should at last be passed to another true Burnley fan. It was thus handed to James Brunskill whom Hywel knows, and if at Burnley you see a bloke wearing a claret and blue banded scarf that clearly belongs to a long gone decade when things were made of wool and hand- knitted; and players like Ralph Coates and Andy Lochhead graced the Turf, then that will probably be the scarf and if it is, that will be James Brunskill its new custodian, wrapped inside its warm and comforting embrace.

I don’t know about you, but the scarf I treasure the most dates back to 1972, machine made and striped lengthways in the college-scarf style, and I still wear it. Its age gives it special meaning. It has seen an FA Cup semi-final, Wembley twice, relegations, promotions, triumphs, drama and near disasters like the Orient game. It has been to Austria, Scotland, Ireland and all four corners of England where Burnley have played. I have a dozen scarves in the drawer but it’s this old one with its frayed ends that fits me like a glove and feels exactly right.

We had two of these old scarves, one each, but flying one from the car window back from a game one day, when the window was carelessly wound down out flew the scarf and was last seen crushed under the wheels of an articulated truck a hundred yards behind us. The word upsetting is inadequate. I knew in that instant exactly how a small child feels when they lose a favourite Teddy Bear.

We probably all have something Burnley related, something precious that we value so much. Burnley Dave’s scarf, old, woolly and made with a mother’s love; is now somewhere near its 60^th year. How can you put a price on such things?

BURNLEY 0 ARSENAL 1

You ran out of words coming down the stairs after the game… robbed, cheated, gutted, stunned, gobsmacked, bereft, angry, astonished, mugged, dumbfounded, fuming; then you thought of more as you drove home listening to the radio pundits who thought just the same as you, having seen a game that was decided by a goal that came after the two minutes added time was over, a goal that we thought initially was possibly offside and involved a clear, blatant handball that diverted the shot that was heading over the bar.

So exactly what happened? Referee Pawson was playing two added minutes. After those two minutes were over he allowed Arsenal to play on from the short corner. He found more time for a cross to come over from the edge of the box. By now the whistle should have been blown for full time.

Scenario 1: Walcott headed the ball onwards. It looked like Oxlade Chamberlain was on the end of it and shot with Koscielny very close by him. By now the whistle for full time should have been blown. The ball was ballooning over the bar. Centre half Koscielny was in an offside position immediately to the side and in front of him a couple of feet from the post. By now the whistle should have been blown for full time. Koscielny put up his arms and diverted the ballooning ball into the net.

Or: scenario 2. It was Koscielny whose foot made contact with the ball so he was not actually offside, but nevertheless the ball was sailing over the bar until his flailing arms diverted it. Referee Pawson unfathomably still does not blow for time or disallow the goal; a goal that we’ll talk about for a long time to come. But whatever the scenario, it was heart-breaking and in no way did Burnley deserve to lose. But the question remained; just how on earth was Walcott one of the smallest players on the pitch allowed space to head the ball onwards? Why did Arfield suddenly leave the back post and race away out of the 6-yard box? In doing so he left Chamberlain and Koscielny totally unmarked.

Ex-referee Dermot Gallagher said it was a fair goal, that Koscielny was raising his arms to aid elevation. What nonsense. Ex-referee Keith Hacket said he would have disallowed it without hesitation.

Pawson then found more time for Burnley to take the kick-off. Marney slammed the ball goalwards in frustration. It might just have worked with Cech still off his line. Pawson blew his whistle. We stood there just open mouthed at the brazen injustice. Koscielny said afterwards he wasn’t sure if he’d handled it. Well he would wouldn’t he? Wenger said he’d seen neither the handball nor even the replay yet. Well he always says that. But, he later agreed they ‘had got a bit lucky,’ and was fulsome in his praise for Burnley and the ancient old stadium and passionate support.

What made the result just so rank awful was the way Burnley had handled Arsenal during the previous 92 minutes. They’d played superbly, tied them up in knots, defended wonderfully, kept their shape, kept Arsenal out of the box other than occasional intrusions; they’d run, harried, intercepted, headed, and restricted Arsenal to only one real clear chance. The game plan worked to perfection until that fateful 93^rd minute.

Before that they’d certainly created their own moments of menace with Arsenal certainly not having it all their own way. Vokes, the lone striker, was awesome once again up front but missed a glorious heading chance in the first half, sending the cross wide from a perfect position. In the second half a thumping Burnley header by Gudmondsson had Petr Cech sprawling to make a fingertip save. Then Keane hit the crossbar from a corner with Arsenal all over the place until they eventually cleared the danger.

At the end of the game referee Pawson was booed off the pitch. It was Pawson who had missed Keane’s header crossing the line at Brighton -funny that. But the team received thunderous cheers and applause for this outstanding performance against one of the best teams in Europe. They were tired and jaded, said Wenger. Actually, they were made to look tired and jaded as they found it impossible to get through the Burnley ranks until that nightmare final minute. For all their possession they were restricted to just two attempts. Throughout the game Keane was outstanding making his omission from Southgate’s initial England squad at best a mystery, at worst a disgrace, although Southgate would rectify that a couple of days later. Gudmondsson too was excellent, MOTM perhaps, having his best game by a mile for Burnley. ‘Tough little sod,’ someone described him perfectly.

Defour was again taken off early with a knock it seemed, but was admirable until then. Keane and Mee enhanced the statistical evidence that they are the Premier League’s most effective pairing with Heaton topping the goalkeeper charts with the most number of saves. Hendrick covered every blade of grass. Marney was a contender for MOTM. Boyd was back to his irrepressible best.

What a glorious day though, the ground bathed in warm sunshine, warm enough to make us think we were still in Tenerife as we peeled off layers of coats and sweaters.     Meanwhile we wondered if we’d got away from Tenerife just in time as there were fears that the old volcano, Mount Teide, might well blow very soon. No end of seismic activity was being recorded in the immediate vicinity with mini quakes recorded on 92 occasions in the past few days with one an almost respectable 1.5 on the Richter scale. This was at Vilaflor reported the Express. The name’s familiar I thought and then realised, hell this was where we went to the Bodega to do some serious wine tasting and have a spot of lunch only a few miles from the summit of Mt Teide. Ey oop, those wine bottles on that shelf are wobbling, I noticed, but put it down to having just had a fifth glass of red.

Wenger came out to huge applause from all sides of the stadium in recognition of his 20 years at Arsenal. Tributes paid to him during the week had mentioned his love of the local sausages from the region in France where he had been brought up and where his brother still lives. If he was Burnley manager the local butchers would have been falling over themselves to make a sausage in his honour. Ian Wright said he still remembered the first week at Arsenal when the new manager had arrived. It was like black and white turning into colour, he mused.

Way back in Tudor times monarchs every so often set off with all their retainers on a Royal Progress around the country stopping in the major towns and cities receiving adulation, homage and especially gifts wherever they stayed. Wenger this season is doing much the same and at Burnley Craig Pawson presented him with the gift of a goal. He has produced teams for two decades that follow his philosophy of beautiful football and fast and intricate passing skills. It was with supreme irony that the goal they scored was as scruffy and messy as you will see anywhere. How any referee could allow that goal remains beyond my comprehension.

He has overseen the building of a new stadium and continually promoted young players. You cannot help but admire what he has done and achieved. He summarised the game neatly: ‘we could have won 1-0 and we could have lost 1-0. Burnley makes everybody suffer here.’ That last bit raised a chuckle; he should have been here in the 80s. Unfortunately it was referee Pawson who made us all suffer and we haven’t even asked what on earth the linesman was watching.

After two weeks away there was a garden to sort out, a greenhouse to empty, grass to cut, veg plots to clear. Never have I hoed so venomously. The Arsenal goal still rankled; the point lost could be the one we pointed to in May as being the one that was so crucial along with the two points lost when Hull equalised in extra time at Turf Moor. Every point lost is cumulative if the worst happens and relegation looms, but some end up so much more significant.

The Joey Barton book had arrived, on Amazon from £20 down to just £9. It was a toss-up between that and two others, the ones by Ray Parlour and Ian Wright. We’d been wondering how much of the Burnley season he would include. There was plenty – and utterly engrossing.

His portrait glares at you from the front cover; presumably that’s the image he wants to portray, a sort of look-me-in-the-eye and you don’t mess with me Robert de Niro kind of thing. It’s a philosophy that for sure dates back to his childhood and upbringing on the mean streets and estates of Liverpool, infested with drugs, crime and violence, with a father who preached the necessity of being able to look after yourself with either fists or a bat. Without the focus of football it’s a life he would have drifted into full-time. His father was a handy footballer himself who played at a respectable non-league level. Barton’s life was therefore immersed in football from when he was a toddler.

The end cover pages of the book consist of more portraits of himself, presumably from the same photo-shoot. You might just flick straight past them without giving them a thought, but their inclusion is revealing, they are in fact what the book is all about – who is Joey Barton, who is the real Joey, which is the one he wants to be; and can he ever really like and respect himself.

     ‘This book can attempt to make some sense of the person I was,’ he writes at the very end.

This is undoubtedly one multifaceted and complex individual; highly intelligent, driven, perfectionist, ambitious, ruthless, determined, blunt, in fact he even includes in the book the lengthy results of the psychometric aptitude and attitude tests that he completed at Burnley. They are incredibly positive. Whereas some players kept their own close to their chests, he pinned his up on his locker door for all to see as if to say ‘right lads this is who I am, this is what you’re getting from me.’

You hear on the grapevine that ‘the lads’ bought into his mentality at Burnley, the senior pro, kicking ass, never settling for second best, geeing them up, saying what he thought in the dressing room or on the training field, the gobby shop steward as he says. Maybe at Rangers they didn’t like it. It looks like there it backfired. His performance in the pre-season friendly up there was strangely lukewarm, almost disinterested; was he already thinking have I come to the right place.

Lord knows how many football books I have in the house, in the office, grandson’s bedroom, the spare bedroom and down in the basement. But this one: reading it is like being hit on the head with a shovel over and again with its pitiless honesty, revelations, brutal self-analysis and the gory details of his fuck-ups (his word), the St John’s estate in Liverpool where he grew up with its rampant crime and drug scene, and all his confrontations over the years. The tone is stark, humour is hard to find; blunt honesty pervades every page and frothy bullshit (his words) is non-existent. He can’t abide slackers, posers, wasters, football’s parasites; he is tough as old boots, has never backed away from a fight but by his own admission has been a monumental idiot in the past because of an inability to control his inner demons.

He goes through each of the clubs that he has been at, the dressing rooms, and each of the managers he has worked with and after some of it you just think wow because it is so candid. You begin to appreciate why the title is ‘No Nonsense’ when in a couple of sentences he can witheringly disparage another player.

He comes to the Burnley section and begins with ‘Burnley was a balanced environment, in which I could learn from the sort of manager I aspire to become. Sean Dyche saw through the tat and the tinsel.’ But Barton is candid; in their first meeting he was as much interviewing Dyche, as Dyche was interviewing him.

He focuses on two games; the title winning game at Charlton and before that the 5-0 demolition of MK Dons. The MK Dons game had fans purring as the goals went in but behind the scenes it was an occasion when JB let rip at half-time. He says that he had been quiet up to then, ‘pretty low key’ in his own words but he ‘showed his teeth’ on Tuesday, 12 January for the first time and ripped into the back four because he’d deemed them slack and casual ‘And I wasn’t having it.’

‘His teammates had been wondering when the explosion would come,’ he writes. ‘The atmosphere was expectant.’

Sean D backed him up. ‘He’s right. Joe is on the pitch. He can smell what I can see.’ Burnley went out and rattled in four more goals.

The Charlton game was the second when he went mad at half-time. Burnley were winning 1-0 but playing without energy or drive. Heaton was keeping them in the game with a string of saves. At half-time he goes mad (his words) kicks the skip and then loses it. He wants that title. Second place is no good. Nobody remembers runners-up.

‘The gaffer comes in, let’s me finish and then loses it. The bollocking works. We fly at them; confirm the title by scoring twice more in as many minutes, and ease off as the circus cranks up.’

He had a memorable season at Burnley and joined Burnley because of Sean Dyche. He says he was offered a two-year deal to stay, on a more lucrative contract than at Rangers. But Rangers was a chance to grow, improve and learn more.

‘Burnley was the perfect football experience; I was overwhelmed by positivity and by a lack of suspicion. The fans took to me and I made lifelong friends from Daisy the tea lady to a group of proper professionals.’

     But he admits to not wanting to be worn out by the worry beads of merely consolidating in the Premier League. There was temptation to remain but Rangers offered something different and compelling. He was at the peak of his powers, he writes.

He has offered few tweets about life at Rangers since his 3-week expulsion. When the three weeks are up, what next? Will Rangers even want to keep him at all? Plus, the SFA is now after him for betting on football matches which is banned in Scotland. If he found some kind of peace and satisfaction at Burnley, at Rangers there seems only turmoil.

This is a terrific book, one of the best I’ve read. There aren’t many books I’ve read and finished and thought damn I’ve finished. This is one them.

 

BURNLEY 1 HULL CITY 1

     The best transfer saga ever said a poster on Burnley’s premier website referring to the curious incident of the Pole in the night. We were still down south, now in Westport, a fishing village on the Jurassic Coast and the stories were coming fast and furious about how and why the Grosicki deal had fallen through.

West Bay was filled with holidaymakers; families and their children hung over the edge of the harbour with buckets on strings catching crabs. There were long queues at the wooden kiosks on the other side of the road that dispensed fish and chips or ice cream or pasties. The harbour was filled with brightly coloured boats with the towering Jurassic cliffs to the left. There we were sat like OAPs on a bench in the sunshine eating our ice creams but then we remembered; we were OAPs.

We were still amazed at the drama of the night before, jets and airports and delegations dashing to Manchester. A dashing winger was just what we wanted but he had flown back and Kamil had the hump. The last time this sort of thing happened if memory serves was back in the days of John Bond and the trek across the Atlantic that he and John Jackson made to sign Steve Daley. This is the bigtime we thought; this is the glamour side of football. And then we saw him play. Steve Daley had been a million-pound footballer at Man City and now he was flying over to play for us. Sadly, Steve’s touch had deserted him and one director described his first-touch as more like a five-yard pass. Bondy admitted he clearly wasn’t fit and there was huge disappointment; so as soon as they could he was moved on.

The plot thickened; did Rennes hike the price, was an agent trying to extort better terms, did Rennes owe money to Grosicki that they reneged on, did Grosicki think he was signing for Barnsley, or was a new tweet correct that Grosicki and agent wanted Burnley to settle gambling debts and the tweet said that the source of this info was a board member. The Guardian had referred to his gambling in profiles they ran on Polish players prior to the Euros.

By the time we got back to Beaminster an interview had appeared in the Burnley Press in which Grosicki had spilled the beans about the whole thing. My agent made mistakes he said… there were complications… we couldn’t reach an agreement… I am disappointed with some people… it was my club the big problem… promises had been cancelled.

There were more questions; who paid for the plane, did he go back home on the train, how last minute was all this, who were the people he said he couldn’t trust, what were the broken promises, and had Ladbrokes in Nelson already barred him?

Eventually, the chairman, Mike Garlick referred to it with the explanation that he, Sean D and Dave Baldwin CEO, had made the decision not to sign him on the grounds that this was a signing that could damage team spirit. Meanwhile in Beaminster there was shopping to do.

 

It’s a lovely place, a sort of Dad’s Army Warminster if you take away the traffic. It’s a throwback to a distant age with a slow, easy pace of life. Deer wander round the fields, badgers are likely to come scuffling round the back door looking for handouts at night and as we strolled down Crooked Lane one day a plump Peacock appeared from nowhere sauntering along. There used to be two, but one disappeared, no-one knows who they belong to. There are farms with quaint names like Shatcombe and Pipsford. There are quaint customs such as if the window cleaner does your windows and you’re not in, you leave the money at the cake shop. And everyone says hello.

A stroll around the square (actually a triangle) is like having a lesson in good manners. You could well imagine Captain Mainwaring having his morning coffee in the Art Deco Tearooms. Mr Tett the butcher pops his head out of his shop doorway, “Good morning Mrs Collier.”

“Good morning Mr Tett,” says Mrs Collier. “I’d like to buy a nice piece of beef; well hung please Mr Tett.”

“My dear Mrs Collier,” replies Mr Tett with the faintest of smirks, twirling his moustache, “everything here is well hung.”

Pass the village bakery: Out pops Mr Bunn the baker. “Good morning Mrs Collier,” says Mr Bunn.

“Good morning Mr Bunn,” says Mrs Collier. Mrs Bunn appears, “I have some lovely baps today,” she says.

At last we reach the Post Office and the general store. “Good morning Mrs Collier,” says Mr Stamp the postman. “Good morning Mr Stamp,” Mrs Collier replies. In we go to buy the newspaper that reminds us all too easily of the outside world and Big Sam’s first England squad. Mrs May has had her first cabinet meeting and is about to jet off to China where she will most certainly meet Obama ready to say Britain must go to the back of the trade queue.

In places like this it’s the little news that’s the big news: Winston the retriever was rescued by the coastguards after falling 80’ down the cliffs. In Bridport a pavement had been closed for 53 weeks causing great upset. The village of Bettiscombe was without phone lines for 11 days. Bridport lost 1-0 in the Tool Station Western League. Beaminster had been bowled all out for 93 against Sturminster. Wimborne were top of the Funeral Plan League. Top sport down here is Nine Pin Pub Skittles and the Dorset Flop technique in the Bridport League is apparently quite unique. Competitions and leagues are fierce and 90-year old Dorset Floppers are not uncommon. For the bigger football teams you have to get to Yeovil or Weymouth or Bournemouth miles along the coast. You don’t see too many football shirts in deepest Dorset.

Southampton is a different story of course with nearby Netley Abbey on our visiting list. As its name suggests there are the remains of an old abbey but apart from that the only other things on offer that might be of interest to visiting Burnley fans willing to make the detour before the game down there, are the Prince Consort pub, and the Jolly Friar Chippy. The latter is quite superb with an extensive menu from which I selected an absolutely scrumptious Cornish pasty, chips and gravy with Pineapple Fritters for afters. Mrs T says I don’t eat enough fruit, so let’s go for the pineapple, I thought.

The drive to Southampton was dire; this is not the quietest of roads and you crawl along nose to tail with interminable hold-ups and roundabouts. But take any side road off this trunk route and within 100 yards you can be in another world of fields and woodlands and picturesque little villages like Piddle Hampton, Blandford Scrotum and Nether Fartinge. At one such village we pulled in and headed for the restaurant of the local garden centre. You’d think it would be hard to ruin a prawn baguette but they surely did. As it was brought to the table and I surveyed the soggy mess the woman at the next table slowly keeled over into her soup. We never did find out if she had merely overheated or had fainted at the sight of the prawn baguette and the gloop that encased and drowned the tiny prawns.

The Netley expedition turned out to be quite an adventure. In the Coop next to the Jolly Friar I watched one of the staff tearing round the aisles in hot pursuit of one of the local winos he’d seen hiding a bottle of vodka in his long coat inside pocket.

“Oi bin watchin’ im since ‘e came in,” said the shopkeeper with a pronounced local twang. “Not many folk come in ‘ere wearin’ a long overcoat when it’s nigh on 70 degrees outside. You can tell ‘em a moil away. ”

Back home in Leeds there was a mini Indian summer to enjoy and a game at last with the visit of Hull City. Things seemed to have gone quiet over there, at least on the surface, between the Egyptian owners and the supporters, adamant that Hull City was Hull City and not the Tigers. More than once Assem Allam threatened to take his bat home and not until the very last minute had Hull added to their depleted squad of just 13 first-team players. In protest at the goings-on (or lack of them) Steve Bruce was now gone and Burnley old boy Michael Phelan was in charge. Against all the odds and all expectations Hull had been winning with Phelan so far working minor miracles. But, he and the owners still couldn’t agree on a deal to make him manager and a takeover deal involving a Chinese group fell through leaving the Egyptians, keen to sell, still the owners.

Egyptians at Hull, Indians at Blackburn, and the Chinese keen to hoover any club they can lay their hands on. At Burnley the cobbles, clogs, mill chimneys, flat caps and whippets may have gone, but this club remains a bastion, a last outpost of local ownership and flat northern vowels with accents exceedingly rare. Let’s be honest though: in the great scheme of things we are the small fry, not part of the establishment; who cares about Burnley?

It was Lancashire versus Yorkshire, Dyche versus Phelan but as far as the press were concerned all that mattered was the Battle of Manchester, Guardiola versus Mourhino. It was as if nothing else mattered. Page after page of it, day after day, feature upon feature; but as far as Burnley fans were concerned Mourhino disgraced himself with the palaver he made after the Stamford bridge game against Burnley in the last Prem season. Age or his enforced temporary absence from the game hasn’t mellowed him; he appears to be as surly and dismissive as ever. But even so, just every now and then he comes out with a pearler. In Spain when he was at Real Madrid and Guardiola was at Barca, the games between them were frequently marred by unpleasantness and red cards for Real players, prompting him to say: “Every time I play Pep I end up with 10 men. It must be some sort of Uefa rule.” Once again he was trumped by Pep, poor chap losing 1-2.

It was 1-1 at Turf Moor. On the messageboards the grumbling was rampant, though I couldn’t quite understand why. We are what we are, egg and chips not haute cuisine. Dyche said he was pleased with the efforts and the increased belief, especially after the mauling at Chelsea. Every player gave his all: they always do. Sure the same problems remained – the lack of pace and width and flair out wide. Gray and Vokes were well held up front.

All three of the new players were involved, Bamford, Defour and Hendrick although only Defour of the three started the game, and what an impact he had. He was by far Burnley’s outstanding player scoring a goal that will be talked about for years.

Yes a pedestrian Burnley with little to offer in the first half were outplayed for long spells and Hull shaved the post with a cross shot; but in the second half there was a spark and zest that eventually produced a 1-0 lead. Defour took the ball in his own half with his back to the Hull half. With as deft a piece of skill as you will ever see he controlled the ball on his laces and as he spun round the ball came round with him as if glued to his foot and he left the marking player for dead. Suddenly he had made yards of space and took off at speed for the Hull goal. Then, from 35 yards he let fly with a strike of such power that it was in the net before you could blink. A tour de force is defined as a piece of true ingenuity or virtuosity. This goal was a tour Defource of sublime skill and artistry.

Hull fans would argue that this was so against the run of play that it was ridiculous. They missed an open goal from just yards with the culprit placing the ball accurately just past the post. They hit the crossbar with a header. But Burnley held on, and on, and on, as the game went into injury time. The second half performance might have merited the win but overall the draw was fair enough. As we willed the referee to blow the whistle Mee went into a blocking tackle and appeared to slip; in so doing he brought down the opponent. Reckless challenge or genuine mishap, some referees might have given Mee the benefit of the doubt, this one didn’t. Snodgrass curled the ball up and over the wall bending it into the corner of the goal with Heaton diving despairingly.

Two of Burnley’s four games so far have been decided by referees, the first against Swansea missing the blatant shirt pull and penalty for Burnley. This one decided that Mee’s unfortunate slip was a deliberate foul.

“Decisions like these cause big problems and lose you games,” said the guy behind us as we exited the concourse down the stairs.

“Yeh, they’ve cost us 5 points so far this season,” his mate replied.

“Hmmm,” I’m thinking, “Sod the referees, if you’ve got a defender at each post for a free kick like this, they head the ball away and the points are safe; so why nobody on the posts?”

Shortly after I wrote that, my pen pal Gunnar emailed from Aalesund. ‘We all knew this was going to be the last kick of the game, so why didn’t the entire team line up on the goal line, they wouldn’t have had a chance of scoring then unless the ball sneaked under the bar. The shot that did go in would have been saved by the player nearest the post.’

Few people were suggesting that Burnley merited all three points, but this was a cruel way to lose two of them when all three were just 30 seconds away.

Hunters Chicken with mash at the Shepherd’s Rest above Todmorden eased the sense of deflation, hunks of chicken in a barbecue sauce with a layer of bacon and cheese. To hell with the calories, there was need of a morale booster and a glass of Blanc. That plus a bit of reflection and a bit of homespun analysis – they didn’t lose, they got a point, we saw one fabulous goal, the sun was shining, we were not in the bottom three, joint tenth in fact, below us were Leicester City; in the morning Master Joe would be making his debut for Farsley Celtic U10s, and in a few days off to Tenerife for a couple of weeks. What Was there to complain about? 

CHELSEA 3 BURNLEY 0

Mrs T and moi were due to go away down to Dorset for a few days, but first there was the Chelsea game after the embarrassment of Accrington. Glass half empty folks thought of the night at the Wham, glass half full thought of the stunning Liverpool result.

We frittered the time away on Saturday before the Chelsea game, a bit of shopping, M&S, a bit of gardening, digging up some taties for tea, and went to Majestic Wine Store in Headingly. We like it there, there’s always half a dozen different whites laid out to taste so of course we do. By the time you’ve tried all six you’ve had the equivalent of a full glass. Mrs T would go on all afternoon but there’s always the worry the staff are watching.

Anyway, we tried a Chardonnay which I can drink quite happily but Mrs T prefers Sauvignon.

“Hmm don’t you think it’s a bit oily,” she asked with a slight grimace having swished the Chardonnay.

Sometimes I surprise myself with my speed of thought and verbal jabs. “Yes it is, it’s only half past two.”

Dany Robson, Jimmy’s daughter, posted on Facebook to say her dad had gone down to Stamford Bridge, apparently the only Burnley player ever to score two hat-tricks there. Without being an anorak, you have to wonder if he is the only away player ever to score two hat-tricks there. Jimmy banged these goals in on Feb 21, 1959 and October 22, 1960. It was when Burnley were at their peak between 1959 and ’62 and scored goals for fun in the last two of those three seasons. Jimmy Greaves and Danny Blanchflower always maintained that Jimmy Robson would have played for England but for the fact that there were so many great players back then. When Burnley beat Chelsea 6-2 in October 1960 they won four consecutive games that month and scored 20 goals, of which 7 came from Robbo. It was Jimmy’s second hat-trick of the month. The five goals I remember are those in the 8-0 demolition of Nottingham Forest in the title season.

Meanwhile all was quiet on the Patrick Bamford loan story. The press and internet were adamant a deal had been fixed but then all went quiet. The closing of the window was but four days away with not a sign or report of any deal, or even renewed interest in Stephens from Brighton or Hendrick from Derby. The story of an interest in Check Tiote seemed more fantasy than fact. Another Icelander’s name cropped up – Birkir Bjarnasson.

It was a defeat at Chelsea, any hopes of a repeat of the Liverpool performance evaporated on 13 minutes when Hazard skated through and fired home. It was simply too hazardous for the Clarets. From then on it was damage limitation and a long, long afternoon beckoned. Chez nous we found a decent internet site and watched the game in crystal clarity. While the rain bucketed down in Leeds it looked tropical in London. The first message on Facebook seemed to sum up the afternoon, ‘lack of ideas, giving ball away, again and again and 1-0 down.’ Any game plan presumably went out the window especially against a superb and rampant Chelsea side back to their silky best, many of them the same players that downed tools for Mourhino.

Sean D said he wouldn’t be going to London to park the bus, and in fairness he didn’t but the front two only had scraps to feed on as Chelsea showed class, movement, found the spaces, ran amok out wide and had the players to run at defenders and take them on. Burnley do not have that luxury. The ball goes sideways, backwards and then today there was just the hoof from the back more often than not. Much of the time they were rabbits caught in the headlights, to be fair, very unlike a Sean Dyche Burnley side.

Alas it was Merson viewing the game on SKY almost foaming at the mouth with his admiration and exhilaration at the Chelsea performance. The second goal was inevitable. A five or six goal drubbing seemed on the cards. The Burnley fans sang and chanted away; is there nothing that can shut them up someone asked on twitter. No there wasn’t and in the second half Burnley had better possession but it was all either in their own half or in the middle third. Swift forays and incisive thrusts into the Chelsea box were few and far between. Chelsea had four or more players who in a one-on-one situation could beat a man. Burnley had none. An Arfield cross shot was the nearest thing.

Defour went off on 55 minutes or thereabouts, having had little influence. Marney went off injured. Arfield giving a quiet performance was also taken off. On came 18-year old O Neill who not for one moment was overawed, Johann the Icelander came on with a bit more bite, but then when Marney went off the paucity of the squad was revealed for all to see when a centre-back Tarkowski was drafted into midfield. Why not shift Johann inside and play Darikwa with pace out wide, I muttered at the screen. At 2-0 down what was there to lose?

But there we had it: for half of the second half there we were playing one of the finest teams in Europe at the moment, with a rookie and a centre half in midfield. How do you cope against a side that played irresistible football – in fact O’ Neill and Tarks didn’t do too bad.

It looked like Burnley would keep it to a respectable 2-0 and come away with some credit, but then with just minutes to go with just three swift passes Chelsea cut Burnley open, crossed the ball, there was a parting of the waves and Moses was in the right place.

Beaten easily then and Heaton was by far Burnley’s stand-out player with four superb saves to keep the score respectable added to which Mee cleared one shot off the line. Shame about that third goal but by then you could argue that this game was simply a lost cause with Burnley totally outclassed and chasing shadows. On the other hand there was that spell in the second half when Burnley forced four corners in quick succession and you wondered if there might be a reward and a shock Burnley goal. We remembered Mee’s headed goal from two years ago but there was no repeat this time.

Before the game, Conte had made references to Dyche’s comments about overseas managers being thought of as geniuses and English managers as dinosaurs. It’s the players that make managers’ reputations, he said, not the media. One of the Sundays had this:

‘On the pitch it was like a pack of velociraptors, with Hazard leading at the front, eviscerating a diplodocus for 90 minutes until all that remained were a pile of bones. It was swift, ruthless, deadly, and hard to watch the mismatch of predator versus prey.’

But this wasn’t a game between geniuses and dinosaurs, it was a game between the haves and the have nots. Chelsea purred like a Bentley whilst Burnley phut phutted like a struggling Trabant. The gulf was cavernous and blatantly obvious. Reactions were broadly divided between two camps; those that simply shrugged it off as the expected defeat and that there were plenty of winnable games to come, and those who were quite angry at the lack of investment and shortage of players with pace and flair. The majority were agreed though; this was another fine game from O’ Neill with Dyche after the game singing his praises. But: oh for someone out wide with pace who can take a man on, most if not all of us thought. Dyche was candid:

They had far too much for us today. There is a massive gulf between where they are as a football club and us, both on and off the pitch and it was on show today. If you add in really poor decision making and a very poor first half, which is not like us, then you have no chance of winning games like this. We gave the ball away far too often against a team who have changed. They are a fine side and they fill the pitch, they sit and absorb a bit more and allow you to play rather than coming after you. But we didn’t use the ball well and there was no will and demand to go and get the ball, to use the ball or keep it. There were too many sloppy passes and you just can’t make decisions like we did today against teams of this quality. Chelsea were never really in trouble. You have to come to places like this with real belief and I thought we were lacking that, in particular in the first half.

So: it was good to get away on tour and have a break from the hurly burly of the transfer deadline and all the wild rumours, the stories, the leaks and media fantasy. It was time to hit the road and head south to Middle England and Shakespeare country and head for a first stop at Bidford on Avon. As we journeyed deeper into rural England it looked like the Bamford deal was going all quiet and the Hendrik saga was fading to nothing. Claret websites had been in a frenzy of anguish and ire at the lack of signings.

Bidford is a twee little place that straddles the Avon; grand houses line the river with gardens that lead to the water, willow trees hang over the rivers edge and tethered boats betray the fact that folks have money round here. Their biggest worry in life round here is will the boat start. Will Shakespeare wandered the lanes around here and sometimes popped into the Bell Inn at nearby Welford on Avon on his way to watch Aston Villa. Welford is even more twee than Bidford with beautiful thatched cottages and fine houses. The Bell Inn is sixteenth century with beams, oak timbers and ancient stone floors polished by centuries of use. The menu is superb. No wonder Will called in. Framed bon mots adorn the wall such as: I read that drink doth you harm, so I stopped reading. Maybe old Will himself wrote that.

I chose Steak and Cracked Black Pepper Pie with shortcrust pastry. Any pie worth its salt must have shortcrust not puff pastry and this one was exemplary. It came in a large white oval dish and I swear the golden crust smiled in anticipation of being eaten. I’m not one for diving straight in with knife and fork; a pie as grand looking as this has to be savoured and admired for a few short moments. And it has to be carefully removed from the dish. You do this with surgical precision inserting the knife tenderly under the pastry lid, slowly cutting in a gentle sawing motion, and gently teasing the lid away from the dish. You place the complete lid in its perfect shape undamaged at the edge of the plate. Next you lovingly ladle out the meat and gravy and arrange it neatly beside the pastry. Only when the last scoop has been removed do you then place the pastry over the meat.

I did all this and sat back and admired the view. The waitress had been watching from nearby and whist doing this not once had I spared a thought about Bamford or Hendrick. This was pie time.

‘Behold,’ I said to the waitress who was clearly impressed. ‘Does anyone else do this? Have you ever seen this done before?’

‘Why no sir,’ she answered. ‘Truly you are a marvel.’

And so too was the transfer window news. Both Bamford and Hendrick signed on the dotted line and not only that, a Pole, an international winger, was jetting in if the news was to be believed.

We’d been down to Portland Bill and had returned to Beaminster. In a Portland tea room we’d had what are lovingly called Dorset Doorstops, thick slabs of fruity brown loaf, toasted, and then lathered with best butter. Two arrived and I managed to eat just one. I defy anyone to eat two.

Back in Beaminster the clock was ticking towards the final closing of the window but round about 7 there was mention of Burnley on the iPad and to our amazement a link with a pacey winger from Rennes and a current Polish international. Peter Stevenson was reporting live from Turf Moor reporting that a delegation of officials were dashing to Manchester Airport to meet the incoming Kamil Grosicki who was flying in by private jet. Wow I thought: who the hell is Kamil Grosicki?

What: a private jet, a delegation, a dash, an international, a fee of £7million. Bloody hell this was unheard of; this is Burnley, we have nosebleeds at the mere mention of anything as exciting as this. Such things might happen at United, or Chelsea or Liverpool – but Burnley – gerraway. Names like Balotelli, Wilshire, Nasri, Alonso and Ngong (now there’s a name that rings a bell) had been bandied about all night and now Burnley were up there in this hallowed group.

Someone posted a picture of Grosicki at Warsaw Airport by the plane… next someone was tracking the flight on Flightradar… someone saw it over Doncaster as he looked out of his window. The excitement on the messageboards was incredible, the clock was ticking, the deadline was approaching, could they do it in time; our nerves were fit to bust. At 9 o clock the plane was over Manchester. Two hours remained.

And then all went quiet.

We assumed it had landed. We assumed he was having his medical, we wondered if he would be whizzed to Turf Moor on the X43 from Manchester or in a motor bike and sidecar like Wallace and Gromit. What could possibly go wrong? He was here. He had landed. A flying winger to add to the squad, just what we needed; there was still plenty of time to seal the deal.

And then deflation, we felt like burst balloons. The first negative tweets started. And then Chris Boden – the deal was off. Peter Stevenson reporting from Turf Moor – wasn’t. The conjecture began, the inquests, the conspiracy theories – the French had put the price up, it was revenge for Brexit. It was all too good to be true. Words like ‘private jet,’ ‘delegation,’ and ‘Burnley’ all in the same sentence. We should have known. The truth would emerge in the coming hours and a sorry story it would be, a story of skulduggery and deception, of intrigue and broken promises. Will Shakespeare would have done it proud. It turned out to be Much Ado About Nothing.

It was all such a long way from half-times with the Fancy Pants Dog Troupe, attendances of less than 2,000, and humiliating defeats at home to Rochdale, but it was great while it lasted.

ACCRINGTON 1 BURNLEY 0

The stats just made you laugh when you saw them laid out in black and white. The Liverpool game was so one-sided it was untrue; the even more astonishing stat was Liverpool’s 1014 touches to Burnley’s 336. But what good was that; Klopp looked bemused, stunned, shell-shocked, in his TV interviews immediately afterwards.

But everyone was in awe of that defensive performance, the back four like a sponge just soaking up the attacks so that rarely did any direct threat come from inside the penalty area. It was a masterclass was the comment that appeared several times from Matt le Tissier on Soccer Saturday and Danny Murphy on MOTD.

The Olympic spirit that Dyche referred to was there in abundance, the basic principle that hard work and effort reap their rewards, that an indefatigable never-say-die attitude will overcome the biggest obstacles, and as Burnley won on Saturday the golds kept coming in Rio.

Our drive home back to Leeds was in a state of elation, not to mention just a little surprise, and ironically we had the quickest getaway ever from the car park where normally we are stuck ‘til sometimes nearly 5.30 as the away coaches drive away. This time we were out before 5.15; we can only suppose the disbelieving Liverpool fans couldn’t wait to get away.

“How could they disappear in a game wearing that garish fluorescent yellow strip?” they asked shaking their heads. It wasn’t so much a disappearing act; it was more that they were simply swallowed up by the waiting defenders, sucked into every trap and blind alley that was laid for them.

‘Liverpool humbled as defence is torn apart,’ began the Sunday Telegraph. Tactically and physically, Sean Dyche’s side were superior.

Sean Dyche’s men were simply hungrier, said the Guardian. On this evidence Burnley have a fighting chance of staying up.

“This might shut up those people predicting we’re going down again, this will give everyone here a massive psychological lift,” said Sean Dyche in the Mirror. Much was made of the fact that Vokes and Gray were neighbours as well as strike partners in several of the papers.

“It helps that we get on,” said Gray. “It’s easy to talk things through and speak to each other. We clicked from day one before I moved in next door to him. It’s a lot easier when it’s a big man little man combination. “

Jurgen Klopp said on Wednesday night that he’d re-watched the tape of his team’s defeat at Turf Moor and had isolated where his players had gone wrong. “The main problem was that with one more pass we were 15 times completely free in the box,” he said. But dear Jurgen I thought, your players had already made 850 passes. And you wanted 15 more?

And so the Olympics ended. It was kind of nice that Brazil won the football final over Germany, Mo came through again but that last boxing fight was a puzzler. I’m no boxing expert but it seemed odd that the winner was the bloke who stood for 80% of the contest covering his head and face with his gloves whilst the British guy belted him mercilessly. It showed once again that you can dominate for 80% of the time and still not win. Perhaps it was the gold medal for playing peekaboo.

Liverpool websites were going into meltdown; the pundits had their knives out ready to stick into Klopp. The Times Burnley report was a disgrace with barely a mention of Burnley in its 1000 words. The Monday red tops preferred to concentrate on the controversial Gray tweets that had emerged after the game. I could only wonder at what kind of person trawls through 4 years of tweets to dig this stuff up from so long ago; perhaps they already have such stuff saved in a jar in the cupboard ready to bring out when someone becomes a celeb. Gray apologised profusely in his lengthy statement and it was a more than convincing declaration of regret. Being in the Premier League brings with it a whole new set of spotlights and this was the perfect illustration. Muckraking my old granny used to call it.

Just when we were anticipating with relish the Accrington game, the old Accrington along with Burnley one of the founder members of the League, The FA charged Andre Gray with misconduct. The media, particularly the internet is cruel and words mostly of the knee-jerk kind, poured out relentlessly on an almost industrial scale. Celebrity status brings its own pitfalls and Gray has become a celebrity of late, even more so now, but for the wrong reasons.

In things like this it is easy to be pompously condemnatory and glibly sanctimonious but I’ll bet that Gray wished there was a large hole on Saturday night he could have disappeared into. Jane Pike, brought up in a family of tolerance and understanding, issued a fine plea (abridged) for others to be understanding and tolerant:

‘I know feelings are running high on this one but I would remind people that it’s pretty reasonable to assume Andre has experienced prejudice too and growing up in a gang culture with other young black men listened to Jamaican dancehall music where they sing about ‘killing the battyman.’

     ‘The upshot of it all is that those who are calling for him to be hung out to dry are in danger of sounding as ignorant as the youthful Gray. For the rest of his life everywhere he goes, dressed well because he has the money as a footballer, he will be judged as a black man with a scar on his face and therefore someone who has gained his fortune through ill-gotten gains.

     ‘This is why I say he has paid a high price already, and every day when he looks in the mirror he is reminded of what he was. If you want to pour scorn on top of all that, you maybe need to stop and think for a moment, about what you are hoping to achieve.

     ‘I have no wish to upset friends who may think at first glance that I am being lenient on Gray, he was wrong, no-one thinks otherwise, I just implore you to get some context and show a little more tolerance yourselves. Imagine the prejudice and struggle Gray himself will have endured, it doesn’t excuse what he did, but the fact that he is grown, is ashamed of the views he once held, and has changed, is surely the best outcome here and one we should welcome.’

Time after time the media pointed to the tweets emerging “after Gray’s first Premier goal.” It’s reasonable to think that prior to that, it was uninteresting as far as the press were concerned.

Alas, the FA may well want its pound of flesh.

In a website piece by Iain Macintosh there were some nice observations: Burnley are an odd football club in that they are run by people with the ability to think over time periods longer than are generally required to eat a sandwich … It’s crazy really, they genuinely do seem to care about ensuring the survival and prosperity of their club more than they do spunking tens of millions of pounds on agents’ fees and discombobulated South American thirty-somethings… sensible and shrewd on and off the pitch they have it within them to survive. Although conclusions formed in August tend to melt as quickly as ice lollies in the same month.

1888, December 1 and it was Accrington 5 Burnley 1. This first-ever Football League season wasn’t the finest in Burnley’s history; it also included a 7-1 defeat against Blackburn Rovers. They played 22 games, won seven and amassed 17 points to finish ninth out of the twelve and had to apply for re-election. They were primitive times. When Wales beat Ireland 11-0 in 1888 three players left the game early to catch the train that they would otherwise have missed. When Burnley played Aston Villa at Turf Moor, Villa began with just 8 players because three were late due to fog causing transport delays.

128 years later here Burnley were in the Premier League, with Blackburn at the foot of the Championship and Accrington hanging on to newly found league status. Manager John Coleman was confident of an upset. We took this with a pinch of salt. ‘Yeh right,’ we thought. Trouble is we forgot what a weird and wonderful game football is… and lost to the most penniless side in the Football League; from the euphoria of the win over Liverpool to the embarrassment of losing at the Wham Stadium.

Burnley made 10 changes and put out the reserves. But these are decent players and it was a side good enough to have won against a Division Two side, but they didn’t do the job. Some of these lads are on good money, maybe some of them on ten grand a week.

They did make chances, the Accy goalkeeper made three stunning saves; McCartan most certainly should have been sent off in the first half thus reducing Accrington to ten men. That he wasn’t dismissed was a travesty; the tackle on O Neil was a leg-breaker. Refereeing wasn’t actually this referee’s strong point. In extra time he disallowed a superb Gray 20-yard goal after he had shrugged off the defender, for a supposed Gray foul.

The first half was 45 minutes to forget and the good news was there was only 2 mins extra time. It was hard to think of one player that distinguished himself, there were near misses from Vokes, Gudjonsson and the Jut. Only O Neil (who surely will be an immense player before long) and Tarkowski came out of the half with any credit. The atmosphere was dead, the football sterile. At least three Burnley players looked out of their depth even at this level, huge question marks over their performances and ability.

The second half was marginally better, Accrington defended, blocked, dug in, tackled, the goalkeeper kept Gray out. With Gray on there was a sense of urgency and more purpose but after his disallowed goal, no side looked like scoring before Christmas in this awful game. Extra-time: it came and almost went with penalties looming, and then the inevitable; the kind of thing that happens on a night like this. The underdogs, by now playing on adrenalin and instinct, scored with just seconds remaining from the deep cross that came over. Their number 17 hurled himself at the massed Burnley defenders like a bull in a china shop, down they went en masse, crumpled in a heap of bodies, legs and arms as a whole bunch of them went down like ninepins. You waited for the whistle for the wildness of the challenge, but no; the ball broke free to the right and the big ex-Blackburn lad, Matty Pearson, came up, stroked it home. Like many others that probably thought the same, all I could do was shake my head and ask: dear God have I really sat through 2 hours of that, for this. I could have been painting a ceiling or something useful.

They talk about the romance of the cup; but for Burnley there was nothing romantic about it at all, just a harsh reminder that a cup game is a great leveller and that a winner in the last seconds is just an absolute sickener.

The one ray of light: the display by O’ Neill, a class act and a star in the making; the two grumbles of the night, the vile challenge by McCartan on O’ Neill and the Gray goal that was chalked off. Unimpressive as Burnley were, they’d done enough to have won this game. Sometimes football is impossible to work out; Accy had done a Burnley – on Burnley; and this time it was they who showed the Olympic never-say-die spirit. Whilst Burnley plodded, and huffed and puffed, but nevertheless had the several chances to win the game, none better than the Jut diving header that flashed wide, or the miss by inches from a Kightly cross; Accrington plugged away, defended deeper and deeper, and got the final lucky break that so often decides a cup game.

Shock result? Perhaps so but there was another eye-opening surprise on the night when celebrity bread-maker Paul Hollywood dunked a Jaffa cake in his tea. Now: that was a real shock and left Mary Berry speechless, although she did manage to say: “Oh… we don’t do that in the south.”

Dunking Jaffa cakes: the nation was shocked, twitter was in meltdown. It kind of put the Burnley defeat into a proper perspective.