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.
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