Dave Thornley’s take on a weird week for the Clarets.
Dave Thornley’s take on a weird week for the Clarets.
After a mere three minutes of last Wednesday night’s Championship match at Turf Moor, Rotherham United broke clear down the Burnley right, the cross to the far post was headed in and Burnley were 1-0 down. It seemed an impolite, not to say impudent, manner in which to treat their league-leading hosts. Perhaps this was to be a portent, an omen.
Indeed, Burnley were made to struggle; the visitors were compact, hard-working and had clearly paid fastidious attention to their homework on the Clarets. This was a challenge, and as the game developed it looked less and less like one which Burnley were up to meeting.
Nerves were settled ten minutes before the half time interval, when Johann Berg Gudmundsson’s cross found Nathan Tella at the far post, who scooped the ball goal-wards, where Jay Rodriguez applied probably the easiest finish of his long and distinguished career.
At 1-1, the relief was palpable, surely Burnley would now ease their way to victory in the second half.
But the pattern of the first half was to repeat itself. Vitinho, who had the sort of game he would probably re-live only in his nightmares, misplaced a pass which set Rotherham away on the break and led to the visitors taking the lead for a second time.
Burnley huffed and puffed but could find little in the way of a cutting edge and were looking increasingly laboured, the game was slipping further and further from their grasp as the match progressed.
Rotherham took to not so much massaging the clock as thrashing it hard on the back with birch twigs and twisting its limbs into painful contortions. Personally, I don’t have a problem with teams taking a little time out of the game in an attempt to preserve a lead, but Rotherham took it beyond the nth degree.
Players dropping to the ground following minimal, or no, contact; receiving prolonged treatment and limping theatrically to a distant touchline. Taking a bit of time over a goal kick is one thing, but this was delaying the game on an epic scale.
The referee was on the receiving end of a wave of abuse from irritated Clarets fans for his perceived indulgence of Rotherham’s tactics, but he was wise to it all along and added a whopping ten minutes of stoppage time, ten minutes which were to prove crucial.
Vincent Kompany turned to his bench was again, the unfortunate Vitinho was replaced by Connor Roberts; Tella by Halil Dervisoglu, Rodriguez by Ashley Barnes and Gudmundsson by Manuel Benson, for whom the term “impact player” could have been coined.
Burnley were helped by Rotherham’s Bramhall being the slightly unfortunate recipient of two yellow cards, and as the game ticked into the additional time, they took advantage. Benson jinked his way past two challenges and curled a serene left foot shot into the top corner of the Millers’ goal.
It was a goal worthy of Maradona himself and was a precursor to Burnley laying siege to the Rotherham goal.
Ashley Barnes has often looked somewhat out of place in Kompany’s fresh new-look Burnley, an analogue player in a digital team, but he made a difference last Wednesday. A volley into the roof of the net was peevishly ruled out for offside and his scorpion kick would have made every highlight reel for decades had it flown into the net instead of over the bar.
Rotherham resisted the battering as best they could until the very last minute when Josh Brownhill’s shot was spilled by Rotherham keeper Johansson, allowing Dervisoglu to pounce on the loose ball and prod it into the net.
Turf Moor was rocking, and the fans who had spent much of the game in and advanced state of anxiety were now sent home euphoric, Burnley remained top of the league with a five point gap over second placed Blackburn.
Kompany though will be aware that despite the stirring finale, Burnley’s overall performance was some way short of their best and with crucial matches ahead against the two teams immediately below them in the table, he must ponder on whether the justified confidence gleaned from their long unbeaten run has spilt over into complacency.
Perhaps yesterday’s visit to Sheffield United’s Bramhall Lane will have gone a long way to answering that question, or maybe it merely posed different ones.
Burnley were comprehensively overrun and demolished by a home team in “shock and awe” mood and this after the Clarets had led 2-1 at half time with Manuel Benson being awarded both goals; don’t be misled by the bizarre technicalities involved in attributing goal scoring credit, the first one was as obvious an own goal as is possible to imagine; Benson’s cross-cum-shot being deflected into the goal by United’s Jack Robinson.
As the half drew to a close, Robinson and Benson combined once again, the Clarets’ winger nicking the ball off a dawdling Robinson and slot the ball into the corner of the net. Surely Burnley would go on and win this one now, wouldn’t they?
In recent weeks, Burnley had largely put the defensive jitters they suffered earlier in the season, particularly from set pieces, behind them.
They had not however been eradicated completely and yesterday afternoon they returned with the vengeance of Jack Nicholson in the Shining. Hesitancy, uncertainty, indecisiveness, and lack of communication all combined to render an axe to the door guarding the Burnley goal.
Yes, the first half equaliser came following the erroneous award of a corner and one of the second half goals was clearly offside, but none of that could disguise the fact that Burnley’s long unbeaten run was being ripped to shreds by the rampant Blades, and the Clarets’ players on the field were powerless to prevent it.
The eventual 5-2 defeat was hard to take, but one defeat, even one as egregious as this, does no long-term harm to a team’s prospects so long as it is not allowed to develop into a bad run.
Vincent Kompany was measured and realistic in his post-match interview citing fatigue as a major cause of the setback, he was correct that Burnley had ridden their luck in recent matches and that a reckoning was in the pipeline, but urgent attention needs to be paid to their set-piece defending and stiffening up their resolve.
As the season progresses, they will have many more corners entering their goal mouth, Burnley will need to find a way to deal with them effectively.
Dave Thornley’s take on a weird week for the Clarets.
The midweek League Cup tie against Crawley Town presents a chance to exorcise the demons of Bramhall Lane prior to next Sunday’s East Lancs Derby against Blackburn, a fixture which we now approach with more trepidation.
Editor’s note: It’s a long bruising season in the Championship and occasionally the ridiculous match schedule will inevitably take its toll. In the words of my youngest Burnley mad grandson, “Bring on the bast*rds!” (TEC).
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Just a little reminder of how good we really can be!
