Dave does Bournemouth away.
Dave Thornley fresh from competing in the Lancaster 10k run comments on Burnley’s fall into deep misery heaped upon even deeper VAR misery.
At the start of this season, Burnley were losing games to good teams projected to finish in the upper reaches of the table, that was disappointing, but understandable. Since then, Burnley have regressed to losing to moderate teams and now, to very poor ones.
There can be no more ironically named venue than Bournemouth’s Vi-ta-ity Stadium, for v-it-ality, in this and other games, is distinctly absent in Burnley’s play. Very much present on the other hand were the recurring themes of defensive disorganisation and panic in possession.
Burnley virtually gifted Bournemouth their first win of the season, loose passes being picked off in midfield exposing a muddled defence for the home team’s first goal and a stranded James Trafford, lobbed from a distance covered by an adjacent post code for the decisive second.
This after Charlie Taylor had put the Clarets ahead early in the game. To say that Taylor doesn’t score many would be the mother of all under-statements, but when they do come, they are worth the wait, a fiercely struck volley low into the corner from the edge of the penalty area.
Once Bournemouth equalised however, the spirit seeped out of the Clarets, there was no meaningful threat and they merely invited Bournemouth, a team struggling for any sort of form remember, to dominate the remainder of the game.
That said, there was a slight improvement late in the game when Sander Berge and Jay Rodriguez were introduced. Rodriguez finding the corner of the Cherries’ net with a neatly worked move only to create a VAR seminar, which lasted longer than a rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody, or an average England World Cup innings, to conclude that some barely detectable part of Jay Rod’s anatomy had strayed offside.
As the game limped towards its conclusion, Berge saw his header clawed away from the Bournemouth goal, a header he did well to perform since his shirt was being grasped by a Bournemouth defender whose arm also contacted the ball. There was no VAR check, and it is unfathomable to understand why not.
And so, Burnley’s season continues its swirl around the plughole of increasingly probable relegation; there are few glimmers of hope, little prospect of any imminent improvement. To add to Burnley's current woes Josh Cullen managed to get himself suspended with yet another yellow card.
Footnote: I was one of the unfortunate 1000 or so Clarets fans who made the 600-mile return trip to Bournemouth over the weekend and can only concur with David while I watched deep Burnley misery be heaped upon even deeper VAR misery. (TEC.)
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