Dave Thornley gets down into the dirt and goes all controversial.
He starts off with a BIG question: “Is Pep Guardiola ruining football as a spectacle, as a source of entertainment?”

The style of play he has cultivated from his time at Barcelona through to his current tenure at Manchester City, is undoubtedly seductive. The problem is that among those seduced by its elegant geometry; the crisp precision of the passing and the matador-like toying with the opposition, are less gifted coaches who attempt to graft the same style of play onto less gifted players.

This has trickled down from the top of the Premier League into the Championship, reducing what we had come to acknowledge as a vibrant, white-knuckle ride of a league, where the upwardly mobile came into direct contact with the down-at-heel, into a kind of cut-and-paste stagnation, where the only discernible difference from one team to the next is the colour of the shirts.

When Burnley were relegated last season, many Clarets fans such as me were consoled at the thought that the Championship would offer a counterpoint to the misery of last season. Instead, we seem to have swapped misery for tedium.

Burnley’s insistence on building their attacks with such studied deliberation is destined to crash against the rocks of a deep and heavily numbered defence such as the one applied by second-bottom Queens Park Rangers at Turf Moor yesterday afternoon, resulting in the kind of stagnation I previously alluded to.

If this were a one-off, it would be frustrating, but acceptable, it has, however, become a recurring theme throughout this season, where Burnley’s inability to prize open such defences has offered opponents a reasonable chance of emerging unscathed from a fixture against one of the widely acknowledged favourites to occupy one of the promotion places come May.

For Burnley to make good on that forecast, they simply must locate a set of keys to unlock a massed defence and that means developing a style of play with more – much more- variety and much more penetration.

They need to raise their supporters to their feet, they need to offer something more purposeful, they need to make supporting this Burnley team seem worth our time and investment.

Despite yesterday’s goalless draw, preceded by another drawn game at Hull last Wednesday, Burnley remain second in the table. Whilst this remains the case, Scott Parker and the Board will probably be satisfied, but after the indignities heaped upon us last season, we fans are hoping – no expecting – to witness something a bit more thrilling.

Editor’s note: The goals will come, and we are not conceding. Patience please? (TEC.)