Last week he was the hero

Last updated : 07 February 2005 By Tony Scholes

Kevin Blackwell thought his side were much the better side but said it was the same old problem that they weren’t able to take their chances.

“It was a familiar story, for eighty minutes I thought we were different class out there,” he said after Leeds had beaten the Clarets 1-0.

“We looked an accomplished team, Michael Gray fitted in as if he had been here all season, he kept the ball better for us and we had better build up play, but it’s our age old problem again, scoring goals.


“The frustrating thing is they are not half chances we are missing, they’re guilt edged chances and even at the end Danny Pugh managed to conjure up a miss when it was harder to miss than score.

“Aaron Lennon has then taken too long when, with a bit of composure, he could have made the keeper go down early, and that’s all in the last five minutes.

“It’s a hard place to come to because they hadn’t let a goal in for the previous seven games. They’re unbeaten here since October and they have beaten some big scalps along the way.

“If we had done what we should have done and finished our chances off, it would have been a bigger victory for us.”

Commenting on the closing minutes he added, “You expect a team 1-0 down at home to go hell for leather and throw things at you, but even at that point we still had two or three great chances to finish the game.

“We can learn from this, and of course you have to keep learning, but too often people are too quick to criticise for a ten minute spell and I think their first shot was the penalty with eight minutes to go. For eighty minutes we were different class and I gave them praise for that.”

Steve Cotterill saw his Burnley side conceded a goal at home for the first time since Spurs knocked us out of the Carling Cup back in November, a goal that brought our first home league defeat since Ipswich won 2-0 at the beginning of that month.

“Of course we are disappointed to lose the record, but we had to some time,” Steve said after seeing his side go down to Leeds. “If you’d have said to me three months ago that we’d have all those clean sheets we’d have taken it.

“For seventy minutes today it was difficult but the last twenty minutes weren’t too difficult to watch. We played like we can play, but it is amazing how when you go down to ten men something seems to happen to spark it off.

“We didn’t play well enough for an hour or so today though. They started better than us and we finished better than them. We could still have done enough to have won the game even after not playing well for sixty or seventy minutes. We are disappointed but we’ll move on to next week.”

Talking about the penalty he added, “I thought it wasn’t going to be our day. We should have had two more penalties through a handball and the push in the back of John McGreal.

“We missed the penalty we did get but that could happen to anybody so there is no blame attached to Ian Moore for that. Last week he was the hero and this week he missed a penalty but that happens, he’s human.”

Finally on the sending off of captain Frank Sinclair he said, “We have no complaints about the sending off, Frank had a bit of a nibble at him.”