No Social Distancing After a Pass Like That

We have been given an 8 o’clock kick-off tonight for a game
at Turf Moor against Burnley, which was surprising as when the TV companies
were drawing up the fixture list for the season, it was rumoured that all
Burnley games had to start after 9 pm watershed along with all the horror films
and violence and swearing and sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll content which has
to be aired after that time to prevent the youth of today getting corrupted by
what they might see and hear.  However, with
Ashley Barnes being injured, it was decided that the TV companies could be
given special dispensation to put this game on an hour early.

Ashley Barnes isn’t the only player in the player who might
not be available today as we hear that they have seven players missing, including
our former players Jack Cork and Jay Rodriguez. 
They have just signed Dale Stephens though – remember him?   The injuries are a shame for Sean AllarDyche
because they might not be able to play their normal flowing style and might
have to resort to a more direct approach. There were a few rumours of
discontent around Burnley at the time of Project Restart because they had a
number of players who were coming to the end of contract and were unable to be
picked. Dyche made his displeasure very clear to the board but he is still here
this season amongst rumours of takeovers, similar to what we have ourselves.   Though I don’t like his style of play, Dyche
gets enough of a tune out of Burnley every year to keep Burnley in the division
fairly comfortably. Their problem is going to come when he leaves.

Burnley away is usually the most predictable of games where
as far as playing football is concerned, we come down to their level get drawn
into taking them on at their own game and get beat because they are very good
at what they do.  On the opening day of last
season up here, we held out until around until the hour mark and then let in a
horrific goal and then caved in.  There
were times in the tail end of last season when we were better against the more
direct teams as we beat Watford and Bournemouth but results against the real
experts, Burnley and West Ham, elude us for now.

Today, we must get it down and play and cannot be drawn into
a game of who can kick it the highest because they will be better at it than we
are. Having no fans in Turf Moor will won’t what make any difference at all. It
will still be fucking cold and blowing a gale but we have to deal with that.  Simply, we have to take advantage of the fact
that they have some of their big players missing and we need to be off of zero
points by the end of the day.

The team news confirmed what I had predicted earlier on in
the week in that Vestergaard came in for Stephens. To be honest, if you’re not
going to use Vestergaard in this game then there is no point in having him
really. Our bench therefore consisted of Jack Stephens, Shane Long, four kids
and a goalkeeper, again illustrating the chronic lack of squad depth that we
have right now.

5 minutes and we go on our first real attack and it sees us
knocking the ball around nicely at the back before Romeu goes right to Bednarek
and on to KWP at right back. He pushes forward and slides a great ball through
to meet Adams’ run.  As Pope comes
rushing out, Che pulls it back and there is Danny Ings to kind of bobble it
into the net.  There’s a small deflection
in there somewhere off of the desperate Burnley boot but who cares?  Not I and not Danny or Ralph and an early
lead.

It’s a great start and this is exactly what I was talking
about the start of the game – if we play football against this lot they won’t
be able to live with us. Another move, this time it on the left as Djenepo is picked
out with a diagonal ball from Bednarek. He feeds Bertrand in and the cross
finds Che Adams in the middle of the penalty area but it’s a difficult height
and he launches it over the bar.

Burnley begin to get a foothold in the game now and create
the first real chance with some surprisingly good football as Vydra plays a
decent one to with Wood before crossing to Brownhill. The ball drops and
Bertrand manages to block the resulting shot. 
From the next ball crossed in, Vydra attempts and overhead kick which
makes no contact but he’s up quickly to smash it over the bar was under
pressure from Vestergaard.

A ball into the channel and Wood goes running into the box
but away from goal as Bednarek moves in to close him down. There is the
slightest touch from Bednarek as Wood deliberately slows down and the 6 foot 3
Burnley man mountain folds in on himself like someone who has just forgotten
how to walk. The net result of all this is that we get given a free kick for
handball. No doubt Dyche will fine Wood two weeks wages for collapsing like a
big soft twat or maybe he will be a massive hypocrite and piss and moan about
it to the fourth official for the rest of the half – yep, the second option.  If that’s a penalty then we might as well give
up and fucking go home and you can imagine what Dyche would’ve been like if
that had been given against his side.

So far so good but the second-half starts with a minor scare
as a cross comes in from a central area and Wood gets up near the back post to
try and head it across goal but McCarthy is smartly off his line to catch.  It’s going to be all about concentration and
hard work.

Another launch forward by Pope and the linesman for some
reason sticks his flag up early, going against what has been happening recently
and half the Saints team stop before Ryan Bertrand produces a shit back pass
which enables Wood to walk around McCarthy and slot it into the net there is no
way this goal is going to be been given because the whistle has already gone in
response to the flag going up. It’s the correct decision as Wood is offside but
it’s going to give Dyche something else to moan about afterwards.

McCarthy earns his money soon afterwards as there is a bit
of pinball in the penalty area which we don’t deal with properly and Taylor
steams onto the ball on the edge of the penalty area and drills it goalwards
towards the near post and McCarthy pulls off a smart save.  It’s one he should make but important nonetheless.

With 10 to go it’s time to use the limited bench that we
have and it’s two kids with Obafemi and Tella coming on for the tiring Adams
and the underwhelming Djenepo.  It’s
basically gives a more legs and we create a chance but Armstrong chooses the
wrong option instead of sliding Tella through and then we have an almost
identical situation where Armstrong picks the ball up but this time he finds
Danny Ings in an offside position but the main man carries on anyway and pings
it into the far corner of the net.

There is the traditional last minute heart attack as the
ball pings around a penalty area and Romeu blocks a shot out for a corner. The
corner comes in, complete with Nick Pope being in our penalty area, McCarthy
punches clear but Burnley are still working the ball around the edge of a
penalty area and we are flying in to try and stop the delivery into the box and
Andre Marriner decides that he’s cold and bored and that he has had enough of
this shit game and blows up and fuck me – we’ve actually done it, won at Turf
Moor.

What an appallingly shit game that was but it doesn’t matter
a shit because we won so the fact that it was appallingly shit is of complete
insignificance. If I wasn’t a supporter of one of the teams playing then I
would have turned off a long time ago and gone and done something more
interesting like wash my hair or cut the grass with a pair of scissors. It was
that bad.

We won in the end because we produced the one bit of quality
in the whole game with the move that led to the only goal and then we defended
properly.  Ings and Adams didn’t get much
service but worked hard to stem the tide of missiles being launched into our
half.  In the second-half we settled for
a holding pattern of just defending the crosses that came into a box and
competing for absolutely everything in midfield. Romeu and JWP were absolutely
immense, meaning that Burnley were restricted even more to belting it long and
trying to get down the wings to sling crosses into the mixer. The wingers also
did their bit but the one disappointment of the game was the lack of quality on
the ball from the flanks.  Both were
trying hard but Armstrong still looks well short of match fitness and he had
the touch of a man playing in wellies and Djenepo didn’t take on Bardsley once
when there was opportunity to do so, especially after he’d got booked.

When the bombs did come into our box, Bednarek and
Vestergaard were excellent and did what they had probably been practising all
week.  Bringing in the Great Dane meant
that Bednarek could play on the right where he looked more comfortable and the
diagonal passing of these two was really good at times. McCarthy had a strange
game, never looking particularly convincing but on the two occasions he was
called upon, he made a good catch from Wood’s header and pulled off the smart
save at the near post to deny Taylor. Both the fullbacks did the jobs well and
Ryan Bertrand will no doubt say that he knew it was offside in the build up
when he gave that shit back pass which allowed Wood to stick the ball in the
net..

They tried to make a big deal of it on Sky afterwards and
tried to goad Dyche about it but the fact remains that would was offside when
Pope launch the ball forward. Sure, the linesman shouldn’t have stuck his flag
up under the new protocols but no damage done and the right decision was
reached. You have to have some sympathy for all the officials including the VAR
official because it is hard to judge offsides when the ball forward has come
from 60 yards away which it invariably always does for Burnley.

Dyche did have a little bit of a moan about the penalty that
they didn’t get when Wood felt the slightest touch from Bednarek and collapsed
on the ground.  Dyche admitted that it
would’ve been soft but that surely means that Wood tried to buy the penalty. As
Dyche is always shitting on about how his players do not dive then saying this
makes him sound like a bit of a twat and this is a man who sounds like Zippy
out of Rainbow (for those like me who are old enough to remember kids TV in the
1970s)

Dyche Shits on to the 4th Official

Ralph was clearly not impressed with Dyche and his moaning
about the penalty and the two of them could be seen chuntering to each other at
half time. You can tell at the end was Ralph was absolutely delighted to get
over the line with this one and it continues the sequence carrying over from
last year in that we beat Palace away, beat Spurs at home and lost Burnley away
and this year all those results have been reversed.

Next up is West Brom at home who we didn’t play last
year.  The biggest tragedy is that it looks
like Charlie Austin has been found out and will soon be packed off to a
mid-table Championship side on the strength of his record for a QPR back in the
days when he could still run a bit.  This
is where we have to start banishing the memory of last season’s home record.