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True or not though, the loud boos that filled the ground during the Wolves game must have affected, even shocked Barry Kilby, as much as any player or manager who heard them, whether they were justified or not. Reasonable people felt sorry for Brian Laws, but it was one of those instances where there seemed to be no in between opinions. In the Claret corner were those who felt he was simply carrying the can for events that were not of his making and that the crescendo of boos was damned unfair, and in the blue corner were those who felt he was simply out of his depth, his card marked by his poor record and sacking at Sheffield Wednesday, and singly responsible for all the defeats at Burnley since his arrival. At the time it was described by many as an underwhelming appointment although much was made of his record at Wednesday of managing on a shoestring. Few, if any people, at that stage were questioning the two people who had appointed him, Barry Kilby and Brendan Flood.
Yet, it was hard not to feel downright sorry for him in several of the games since he took over. The Fletcher headed miss against Portsmouth would have changed that game. Jeff Winter in his website blog noted the penalty that should have been awarded in the Wolves game. There were the linesman's decisions in the Fulham away game that gave them a 2 - 0 lead. The two injuries in the early minutes of the Bolton game wrecked any game plan. Another bad Fletcher miss in the away game at Man Utd would have given the Clarets a 1 - 0 lead had he scored. Individual defending errors both in the Portsmouth and Wolves games gave those games away. A deflection off Carlisle in the Wolves game was cruel. The Thompson miss in the Arsenal game would have made it 2 - 2. Wasn't there a game where a goal disallowed for offside should in fact have stood? The list might well be longer and all of them events beyond any manager's control.
Discussions centred around who on earth, if this was true, could be brought in at such a late stage to rescue the Prem place - Curbishley, Coppell, Stan Ternent, Peter Reid, Iain Dowie, Megson, Phil Brown maybe, even God forbid, the forgotten man David O'Leary. What was certainly agreed was that the feel good factor and belief had clearly gone. Anticipation and optimism were at rock bottom after the Wolves game and there was huge disappointment at the way the season was ending in such a ragged way. And yet at the same time there was the desire to get behind the team and 3,500+ tickets were sold for the Wigan game.
It all turned out to be fanciful, downright ridiculous nonsense anyway. "This is ludicrous, irresponsible, damaging and inaccurate," said Barry Kilby. "We are NOT in the process of looking for a replacement for Brian and everyone involved with Burnley Football Club is putting every ounce of effort into staying in the Premier League." And if relegation did occur then the good news was that the Premier League had upped the parachute payments to a staggering £16million for the first two seasons and then £8million for the next two. It was tempting to say who cares about relegation; with that kind of money we'll bounce straight back up anyway. But with Brian Laws, asked the cynical? Get off the bloke's back demanded the others.
A few hundred miles away the nine-point deduction at Portsmouth was confirmed and in retaliation Avram Grant threatened to throw the final weeks of the Premiership into chaos when he announced that he would concentrate on the FA Cup and might well play weakened teams in the League. With their next game against relegation rivals Hull City it generated ripples of apprehension and anger. Previously, they had been to Burnley and playing out of their skins, won 2 - 1. Any such actions would of course have a direct bearing on the Burnley season. A friend mailed me about a spat he had with a Pompey supporter.
"I gave a Pompey supporter a hard time the other day. He was expecting me to express pleasure in their FA Cup run. I retorted 'how could I when you were doing it by cheating. You are putting out a team you cannot afford and are now expecting the creditors, many of whom include small firms like printers, caterers and charities like the St John's Ambulance Brigade, to take a minute cut of what they are owed, so that some other rich kid can sweep in with their largesse, freed of any commitment to meeting those financial obligations. I don't want t see you do at all well because to do so would be under utterly false pretences. At least the club I support is prepared to live within its means and honour its financial obligations'."
As it turned out, Portsmouth beat Hull and came back from 2-1 down. It gave little help to Burnley. Carlisle was missing with a broken toe so in came Duff who had an excellent game. In a gutsy, give-everything performance, they were on course for a deserved point and 0-0 draw until Wigan scored deep into injury time. The winger skinned Jordan, crossed, and the unmarked Rodallega powered home a bullet header from outside the 6-yard box. The word heartbreaking was totally inadequate. The feeling of deflation was as deep as anything felt for weeks. Laws' face at the end said it all. The word cruel was used to describe the manner in which Wolves won the previous week. Yet again the same word was on everyone's lips and in every Sunday report.
Another pal emailed: The match, what can I say? I'll start by saying that Wigan were, player for player, better than us. It's the same almost every game. We had chances - only a couple - but chances they were. I was, for the majority of the game, engulfed in that 'defeat feeling'. At the same time though I was feeling we were a lot more solid in defence, or maybe their finishing was woeful. God, I don't know what I felt; it's a numbness, a sadness, an expectancy; not a nice feeling, a bit of nausea, heart pounding in my throat. Pato skimmed the bar and Nugent just failed to connect when sent through in injury time. Seconds remaining, that defeat feeling increased. Then, a header from one of their guys and the net bulged. Their crowd erupted. It was another Pavlyuchenko Moment. I love the Prem but I worry I might not see it again. But I have to remain positive for my son. If he's to serve his time as a Burnley fan, he has to face up to times like these. It's bloody hard though.
The only consolation on such a disastrous Saturday was the Arsenal win over West Ham, a defeat that put West Ham well and truly back into the relegation mire just three points above Burnley.
The Blackburn versus Chelsea game the day after showed one thing; that any possibility of seeing more than 30 consecutive seconds football from Blackburn was quite remote. If Stoke City receive criticism for the way they play, then Blackburn deserve worse. This was what one might call 'bump and grind' football; bump into any opponent as often as possible, stop them playing and grind out a result. Pretty it was not and about as beautiful to watch as manager Allerdyce's gum-chewing face. They got the result, a 1-1 draw, but other than the goal it was hard to remember any other serious attempt on goal or any sequence of more than a couple of passes. But here's the thing; it's football that in their case has brought them enough points for another Premiership season.
With just seven games to go the Press featured many an article about who was likely for the drop. Burnley were natural favourites with the unbelievably poor away record cited over and over again. Looking back to the beginning of the season all of us hoped that although we would struggle, that it would not be a season of humiliation. Sadly, the away record was becoming exactly that. Portsmouth with their nine point deduction were certainties; West Ham had again become embroiled in the struggle along with Hull City. Of course there was still everything to play for but only unless Hull and West Ham had a final disastrous run, did Burnley have any chance of survival.
Wonder what's going through Owen Coyle's head, now that Tony Mowbray has left Celtic, we all asked, with a lot of us feeling a sense of smug satisfaction at the way things had worked out. The Celtic job was the one Coyle had always openly said he wanted, but after the Wembley play-off triumph, the offer of the job came for him too soon, he confessed. None of us would have minded had he stayed at Burnley longer and then taken the Celtic job as soon as it was available. It's what we all expected to happen and we would have waved him goodbye with tremendous gratitude and affection. Had he not deserted Turf Moor for the Bolton job, he would most certainly have been offered the job following Mowbray's departure after the humiliating 0-4 defeat at St Mirren on March 24th. Life works in funny ways. If he was feeling a sense of frustration and annoyance and kicking himself on hearing the news then it was the least he deserved. This was a man who displayed a total lack of any honour or principles when he left in mid-season. What goes round goes round.
A chum sent me details of the Preston North End Player of the Year Awards Evening. At Burnley it was £80 a person in the Gold area. At Preston it was an even more mind-boggling £100 per person PLUS VAT. Dear God where do people get this kind of money from these days? I thought there was a recession. You could live for a month in Bacup for less than that. Mind you at Preston there was a champagne reception with canapés in the Museum, a video, and a first-team player to sit on your table. At that price Mrs T said she'd want one to sit on her knee although not if it was Jon Parkin or Neil Mellor. No chance of seconds there either if it was them on your table and pie and chips on the menu. Parkin was player of the year in 2009 which presumably doesn't say much for the rest of them. Catering was by 'Heathcotes' which I learned was a fancy restaurant and there's one in Alderley Edge where all the millionaires live and even the council houses have gold taps. Words like sun-dried, mozzarella, ragu and rustica are liberally sprinkled over all the menus and you're not allowed in unless you've been marinated. Paul Heathcote on his 'Who Am I' page was able to tell us he was an MBE. Can anybody be an MBE these days? What about me for writing all these Burnley books? Somebody asked me the other night had I ever been syndicated. I said no, it was just the way I walked after I'd had the operation. This is absolutely true but one of the most popular books in Walton Jail is No Nay Never Vol One. I have another chum who teaches English to Liverpudlians there and she said she took a copy in and it was passed round and eagerly read by all the Clarets. Nobody wanted the Ashley Cole book which shows that even hardened lags can be quite discerning.
And then it was THE match, Burnley versus Blackburn Rovers. Supporters said just one thing; if we go down, let's at least beat this lot. The signs were not good. Blackburn had won the last five.
It was a 12 o'clock kick off for the Blackburn game with compulsory coach transport for all away supporters and surrounding roads closed off. There were enough police horses around to rival the US Cavalry. Helicopters, hooligan spotters, dogs, and big hairy policemen in bovver boots and full SAS regalia lined the area hovering and looking menacingly brutal and threatening. And was it my imagination or did the yellow-jacketed stewards look more alert than usual? All this for a footie match; do they do this when its City v Man United or Everton v Liverpool?
To get to the car park by 11 it meant a 9 30 departure from Leeds on a sunny but cold day. The day before, West Ham, humiliated in mid-week by the rampant and surprisingly fluid Wolves had lost again 0-1 this time to Stoke City, keeping the slender 3-point gap between them and Burnley. There was something reachable about it. It looked small and bridgeable. The pressure was really on. Manager Laws made all the right noises as hope and optimism still remained. A Division below, Newcastle and West Brom looked like they would be the ones to come up, but as yet there were still no certainties for relegation other than Portsmouth. Bolton, in relative safety, were trounced 4-0 at home by Manchester United. The wine we had with dinner tasted all the sweeter.
Before the game David Dunn had demonstrated that he isn't quite the sharpest tool in the box with his crass comments that he hoped Blackburn won 10-0. But he had the last laugh when he scored the solitary goal. Des Kelly in the Mail bemoaned the daftness of Jermaine Defoe writing his new sports column. Kelly commented that Defoe would probably be writing it very slowly in crayon. It was the only thing funny on a disheartening weekend.
If the game began in hope, by two o clock, all optimism and even interest had vanished. "That's why you're going down," sang the Blackburn hordes, and it was hard to disagree after a Burnley no-show and a horrible 0-1 defeat. The words and anguish poured out of the supporters as they left the ground, or got home and got their computers out:
Gutless, spineless, inept, shameful, weak, timid, outclassed, outplayed, outthought, tepid, toothless, lacklustre, uninspired, boring, lightweight, abject, clueless, second-rate; woeful, embarrassing, depressing; it was quite a list.
But, another one was 'cheated'. A non-penalty won the game for Rovers, referee Mike Dean making up for his generosity to us at Wembley in May, with a howler of a decision here, when he fell for the oldest dive trick in the book when the Rovers player went over Jensen even though there was absolutely no contact. It was cheating of the highest order and sadly decided the game. But in truth the blame lay with Jensen himself. I have never been one to blame or criticise individual players in any write-ups I have done for previous games but this time I wanted to scream at Jensen. In fact I did. Here's me, a grown man, pillar of the community an' all that; but patience and tolerance was finally exhausted.
"Throw the ball for God's sake," I, and others, yelled at him as Paterson hared down the wing in acres of space. WHY will this goalkeeper so rarely throw a good ball out to a player? Chelsea at Burnley scored a gem of a goal as the ball left the goalkeeper's hands from a superb throw and ended up in the net seconds later. It was text book. But Jensen; he dillied, he dallied; he dithered and then eventually hoofed the ball up with a trademark stratospheric kick into the opposition half. Of course it came straight back and bingo Blackburn had their penalty. Never mind that it was unfairly given. Had Jensen seen the opportunity and thrown to Paterson, the penalty incident would never have happened. "I bloody despair," I moaned to Mrs T. "These kicks and missed opportunities go on game after game."
Not that Paterson had anything resembling a good afternoon. Along with the Fletcher and Nugent he was never in the game and contributed little. In midfield Alexander and Elliot were simply swamped. Blackburn had little to beat. Where was Bikey, the forgotten man, along with Gudjonsson? For all their limitations Bikey is a crunching centre-back and Gudjonsson could have put himself about a bit to add some bite to a limp, timid midfield.
At the other end Burnley might have had their own penalty when Samba upended Elliott just inside the box. We Clarets screamed but just an inch outside the box decided Dean. His other rank poor decision was to miss a blatant handball outside his area by the Blackburn goalkeeper. The free kick might have brought a Burnley goal. I emphasise 'might'. On such a day as this Mears would probably have hit the back of the stand with a free kick.
On a threadbare, second-rate pitch, flowing football was impossible. First touch passing was a lottery. The ball bobbled and bounced and reared up. Since Blackburn played little football of note anyway, it was no real hindrance to them. But they were first to every ball, won the tackles and most of the headers. They had the Premiership nous and experience that Burnley did not. Their scruffy win took them to tenth in the table and this was the defeat that probably ended Burnley's season.
I drove home with part of me thinking what a depressing wasted afternoon it was. Why was I bothering to go? Where was the enjoyment or entertainment? It was now a dismal experience watching this disjointed, mediocre Burnley side lose yet again. The regression was dreadful. And if we went down what would the next season bring if the better players left and only the mediocre remained led by a manager in whom fewer and fewer people believed in. In truth there was little to make anyone think that this was a side that could do well back in the Championship. What we were watching was not even an average Championship side way out of its depth even against a side as limited as Blackburn Rovers.
And yet the ever-Claret part of me did think how long could this bad luck last? When will it turn, or did we use it all up in the last few weeks of the promotion season? And logic and reason reminded me four recent defeats were by just the odd goal, a far cry from the regular thumpings early in the season. Surely there was some comfort in that? But no, the feeling came back. This wasn't just humiliating. It was abject.
Were we being harsh after this game? Where does blame lie - luck or lack of it; Coyle for ripping the heart out of the club and shattering the players; the new manager for being out of his depth, or the directors for appointing him in the first place with such a mediocre win-percentage throughout his career. Or the players who can no longer lift themselves for even a game like the Blackburn derby. Should we even be in this Division in the first place? Could we not accept that most of these players, hard though they tried, were just not good enough anyway?
But the debate about the Laws appointment would not go away. The airwaves hummed. The pubs rocked with argument. Phone calls and texts flew back and forth asking the same question. Just what was the thinking that lay behind the appointment? What could be done? What should be done?
Eleven defeats out of thirteen, since he took over, was a pretty damning statistic we debated after the game. But If Laws was the wrong man; then who was the right one after such a destructive, traumatic managerial turnabout? Just who was available; who of note would have been interested? And, would it be any use changing the manager, with just six games until the end of the season?
"The fat lady hasn't sung yet," texted a friend. "But unfortunately the pianist is getting the music ready."
"Can things get any worse?" someone moaned coming down the stairs. "Yep, we could be in Division One and lost 0-1 to MK Dons," his mate replied. Amen to that. Kind of put it in perspective for a brief moment. After the Wolves game the boos rang out loud and clear round the ground. After this game they did not. It was as if people realised there was no point. Resignation had replaced displeasure. The game was up, the dream was over.Such a wonderful symmetry though. Mike Dean helped us into the Premiership with his very generous decisions at Wembley. Against Blackburn he probably sent us back down again. Kind of funny really I suppose - or maybe not.