We were the king of the clean sheets

Last updated : 11 September 2005 By Tony Scholes

Jones was obviously disappointed when it looked as though his side were about to win for the first time since the opening day of the season. “When you get yourselves into a position like that, you should shut the game down,” he said. “It was a bad goal to give away, it was the same against Wolves, we just don’t know how to close it down and be ugly and put balls into corners.

“There was that little bit of pressure at the death that you know you are going to get but when you score three goals away from home, you should be winning the game.

“We came back twice so we showed a lot of character and a lot of determination. Some of our defending in the first half was a bit woeful but the second half we shored it up and deservedly went in front. And having got our noses in front it does feel like a loss, just as it did two weeks ago against Wolves.”

Steve Cotterill was certainly not happy about our defending after seeing a Burnley side concede three at home for the first time in a league game since he took over as manager.

“They say scoring goals is supposed to be the hard part of football, but we are finding the difficult part is defending them,” he admitted. “Last season we were the king of the clean sheets and had twenty-two of them. We seem to be a bit edgy at the moment and sometimes when you work on things and it is highlighted, people can make mistakes.

“We are getting done for individual errors at the moment and the sooner we can eradicate that the better because we haven’t conceded a bad team goal today. It’s just lapses in concentration but we did deserve at least a draw out of the game.

“I am sure it was a good game for the neutral to watch, but I’m not sure mine or Dave Jones’ hearts enjoyed it too much.”

Looking at the late comeback he added, “I just wonder if that last five minutes was the turning point in our season because we could easily have given in then, so whilst I’m not pleased with lots of aspects of our play today, there are a lot of good things that came out of it like the great character we showed.

“It could have been easy for them to not want the ball and to go and hide and not make a mistake because you feel the crowd might have a moan. To be fair though, I thought our supporters were fantastic today and they stayed with us right until the end.

“We’ll now look forward to the Preston game.”