After reading nothing but doom and gloom on social media following the 3-1 home defeat to Aston Villa along comes the voice of reason from none other than the original Dave Thornley writing for Clarets Mad.
“You get punished for that at this level.”
In his usual deadpan style, Alan Shearer trotted out one of his favourite cliches on Sunday Night’s Match of the Day, when asked to pass comment on how Burnley’s tactics and pattern of play were ruthlessly exploited by Aston Villa in that afternoon’s Premier League encounter at Turf Moor.
Like all cliches, there was more than an element of truth in Shearer’s comment.
When these two teams last met at Turf Moor, a couple of seasons ago, Villa’s 3-1 win was a body blow to Burnley’s unsuccessful bid to avoid relegation. Back then, Villa was a stuttering, inconsistent and disjointed outfit under Steven Gerrard. Now, under Unai Emery, they are a smooth, slick, and cohesive unit and on Sunday, were clearly worth the three points, obtained by the same score.
Burnley will face many such teams as the season unfolds, indeed next Saturday’s visit from Tottenham Hotspur will be another one, and this young and (in Premier League terms) inexperienced Clarets team will have to absorb the lessons being handed out to them and learn them quickly.
Committing players forward and pressing high up the pitch has been Burnley’s style under Vincent Kompany, it has produced some stirring and invigorating play; done well, it is a joy to watch, but equally leaves gaps which high quality Premier League players are all too happy to exploit.
Under normal circumstances, I prefer not to draw comparisons with previous teams and previous managerial regimes, but peak Sean Dyche Burnley had a way of extracting valuable points from games like Sunday’s.
It is not too fanciful to imagine Nick Pope advancing swiftly off his line and smothering Ollie Watkins’ slightly heavy touch as he bore down on Burnley’s goal in the eighth minute; instead, an indecisive James Trafford allowed the Villa striker to clip a cross to the far post where Matty Cash applied the finish.
And it requires no great leap of the imagination to visualise Ben Mee or James Tarkowski interrupting the passing moves which led to the second and third goals. Doing the tough, messy, and unattractive things well remains of importance and can win you important points.
That said, there were positives; the first twenty minutes of the second half saw Burnley apply real and sustained pressure to the Villa goal, highlighted by a superb turn and volley by Lyle Foster to halve the half time deficit and stir notions of a comeback.
Villa’s third goal, however, put paid to that, and sucked the oxygen out of Burnley. They recovered slightly to fashion two reasonable chances later in the game neither of which Jay Rodriguez was able to convert. But no reasonable viewer would have denied that Villa were worthy winners.
In the Championship last season, Burnley took a couple of months to hit their stride, but in doing so, were still able to pick up points from matches against some poor opponents. That luxury is not available to them this time, the Premier League is a tough school, and the learning curve is a steep one.
Editor’s note: I am seriously shocked to see and hear dissenting voices coming already from Burnley supporters questioning the managerial merits of Vincent Kompany. Some folks have some seriously short memories. Bring on the Spurs and let us all give new players such as Luca Koleosho the time to gel . (TEC).
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