Dave's take on it...

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly at Turf Moor

First the good; barring a bizarre and unprecedented sequence of results, Burnley are now guaranteed a place in the qualifying round of next season’s Europa League.

With just two matches remaining only Everton, who lie six points adrift of Burnley, can theoretically displace the Clarets from seventh place and the last qualifying position.

This is unlikely given the Toffees’ goal difference is inferior to the Clarets to the tune of fifteen goals and turning that around may be considered unlikely in the extreme.

All this points to a hectic close-season for the Clarets and moreover one that is shortened by the World Cup and the early start to the Europa qualifying rounds. This will put additional pressure on Sean Dyche as he looks to beef up both the quantity and quality of the Burnley squad.

That said, it is something of a misnomer perpetrated by lazy journalists, that Burnley have a small squad. They don’t, it merely seems that way because the starting line-up doesn’t really change very much.

If Burnley are to maintain their impressive upward trajectory, whilst simultaneously competing on an additional front, Sean Dyche will have to be prepared to show greater flexibility in his squad rotation.

He will now also have to do so without the services of Dean Marney and Scott Arfield, both of whom will be leaving the club at the end of the season.

These are two players who were there at the start of the incredible journey Dyche has taken the club on and both have contributed hugely to the success of that journey.

Football clubs and football managers cannot afford the luxury of being sentimental about players, but we fans can, and Clarets fans everywhere will offer a wistful and fond farewell to both “Scotty” and “Deano”.

The bad was yesterday’s nil-nil draw with Brighton, a drab and featureless encounter with little to commend it as a spectacle. Burnley’s play looked ponderous and tentative, whilst Brighton’s ambition seemed to merely revolve around the clean sheet that would surely rubber-stamp their Premier League survival.

There was one mad goal mouth scramble in the Seagulls end, a couple of decent penalty shouts for Burnley and a good save from a Gudmundsson free kick, but other than that, the yawns took over the stadium.

Finally the ugly, I love my club and I love my town, but the persistent booing of Brighton full-back Gaeten Bong from a section of the Burnley crowd made me squirm in my seat with distaste and embarrassment.

Bong, had accused the venerated former Claret and local Burnley lad Jay Rodriguez of a racial slur when Brighton recently played Rodriguez’s West Bromwich Albion.

Rodriguez was exonerated by the FA for lack of evidence, but that did nothing to appease those Burnley fans who vented a wildly disproportionate level of vitriol in Bong’s direction.

Brighton manager Chris Hughton, rightly, leapt to his player’s defence and called the booing “shameful” and he was right. This sort of thing presents the club in a terrible light and undermines much of the goodwill that the club has built up during their time in the Premier League.

Let’s have no more of this sort of thing please?

This article was written by uber Burnley fan Dave Thornley, who contributes regularly on behalf of Clarets Mad (TEC).