Dave's take on the Toon defeat...

[The Bedlington Terrier]

In the long and illustrious history of Burnley Football Club the last seven days will not be recalled with any affection.
They began with the club owner and a shirt-sleeved Sean Dyche attempting fruitlessly to clear a sudden blizzard from the Turf Moor pitch and subsequently having to field a volley of complaints about the club failing to predict the timing and volume of the snowfall which caused the fixture against Spurs to be called off.
This was followed by a tedious midweek goalless draw at Wolves in which Burnley held firm but failed to assert themselves.
The week concluded with the Clarets losing a “must win” match away at bottom-of-the-table Newcastle United, a fixture at a ground where they hadn’t won since Peter Noble scored the winner in the seventies, against a club who hadn’t won in any of their previous games and had recently come under the management of the former Burnley boss Eddie Howe.
As if those factors were not sufficient portents of doom, injury denied Burnley the services of Ben Mee and, after half an hour, Maxwel Cornet. Burnley were thus denied the services of both their skipper and their star player for the majority of the match.
Add all this together and there was only one conceivable outcome and on forty minutes Callum Wilson delivered it; Nick Pope advanced into a crowd of players to claim a cross, he caught it, as he usually does, but the buffeting of the attendant Newcastle players caused him to drop the ball at Wilson’s feet who promptly drilled it into the roof of the net Pope had strayed from.
Often goalkeepers receive undue protection in such circumstances, but not this time and after a VAR check, the goal stood. In fairness it probably wasn’t enough of a challenge to warrant a foul and the award of the goal was probably justified.
Burnley huffed and puffed for the remainder of the game; Johann Berg Gudmundsson had a deflected shot which struck the post; Jay Rodriguez was – accurately - adjudged offside when he turned in a cross; and Matej Vydra’s control abandoned him with the Magpie’s goal at his mercy.
In truth however, for the second game in the week, Burnley never really looked like summoning up the victory they could desperately do with.
Match of the Day’s resident Victor Meldrew, Danny Murphy, thinks Burnley are in relegation trouble, which is undeniable, whilst on Sky Sports Clinton Morrison expressed confidence that they will extract themselves from it, a view which recent history would support.
The task facing the Clarets, purely – if not simply – is to win at least nine of their remaining twenty four games, it will be hard work, and to achieve it will take a monumental effort. This squad of players have experience and character, they are well led and well organised, we can only watch and hope that that will be enough.