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Clarke Carlisle's blog raised the temperature even further. He decried the violent scenes he saw at the end, he was angry to see his son in tears after the game; he referred to the small minority of idiots as Neanderthals. Perhaps they were, but was it the job of a paid footballer to criticise, many fans asked, when his team had just given a performance that was far below what was expected in such a huge game. Had he been able to point honestly to the team's shortcomings on the day, giving some insights from a player's point of view, his opinions, valid though they were, might have been better received by everybody. The whole thing begged a serious question. Do we want our players to be high profile with blogs and media appearances or do we just want them to go out and play and concentrate solely on that until their playing days are over? Players at Burnley have certainly had newspaper columns for as long as I can remember. But, the danger is that if they pontificate, they can backfire.
If the game itself was bad enough, and if it was the beginning of Burnley's limp farewell to the Premier League, what went on off the field and in the stands after the game was indeed shameful. The coin-throwing incident at Wigan was already being investigated by the FA, but the crowd trouble in the Cricket Field Stand after the Blackburn game was a sad throwback to what we thought was a bygone era.
If the season began in dreamlike fashion, it was ending with nightmare scenes. There were over 40 arrests. Blackburn's David Dunn and Chris Samba were pelted with coins by frustrated Burnley fans as they went to a post-match TV interview. An object was thrown at referee Mike Dean after he awarded the penalty. A bottle was thrown at Brian Jensen from the Blackburn end as he came in from his pre-match warm-up. 150 seats were ripped up in the Blackburn end and toilet areas in the concourse were damaged. A Burnley steward working in the Blackburn end was taken to hospital with back injuries after he was knocked over. Rival fans tried to get at each other through the dividing doors in the Cricket Field Stand concourse. There were horrible scenes involving stewards, supporters and police at the final whistle. And, as Burnley fans were made to leave, photographs and videos showed the bestial severity with which police batons were wielded and heavily used.
One wondered if Clarke Carlisle saw the Youtube video clip of the scenes in the CF Stand where the remaining fans were finally 'ushered' out by police officers. Two in particular were savage and Neanderthal themselves in their use of batons. The clip lasted just 40 seconds and in that short space of time one officer used his baton 14 times with a force that bordered on barbaric; at one point on someone who must have been on the floor. In the very last seconds an officer in a flatcap was equally vicious and brutal on retreating fans, certainly by then visibly on their way down the stairs. The two officers in that clip can in no way suggest they were defending themselves. The blows rained down in an uncontrolled, ferocious and indiscriminate way. It didn't just border on medieval. It WAS medieval in its brutality.
Afterwards a Blackburn coach window was smashed. There were reports of incidents beneath the Culvert and in the town centre, and for several hours police maintained a heavy presence in the Burnley streets with police reportedly entering a number of bars in the town centre.
If the penalty was controversial with Olsson openly admitting to the Norwegian Press that he had dived, then so was the sight of Rovers supporters, most of whom had been in the ground over an hour, with bottles of beer from the concourse bars up in the stand; "smuggled" up there said Chief Inspector Jeff Brown in the Telegraph. How and why did this happen?
"It could have been very nasty," said someone who was in there. "We managed to avoid two possible disasters. In the concourse it was like Hillsborough, and at the end of the match Heysel springs to mind. The concourse was so full; stewards were being crushed in position. You couldn't move and the final seven coaches were about to land. So, the order came to close the bars and get the supporters up into the stands. Good decision, otherwise there would have been some very severe injuries. At the end of the game if the Burnley supporters had got past the stewards and police, the Blackburn fans would have run and then you would have had repercussions like Heysel."
There were in fact many accounts that contradicted Inspector Brown, and that fans were allowed, even told, to take their drinks upstairs, in order to ease the serious overcrowding.
By the end of the week the images of shame and mayhem had faded. With defeat had come general acceptance of Burnley's position. Expectations raised by the early season successes had been well and truly exorcised. It all meant we could sit back, relax and enjoy the rest of the season for what it was - a brief stroll through the greedy wonderland that is the Premier League. With this in mind, the pledge we had made way back in May 2009 to take pleasure in the season was resurrected and it was star-studded Man City who were the next visitors. We would lose, of course we would. We did not need to win. Fate was settled, it didn't matter any more; the Championship loomed. So, this was a game where we could roll up, settle back and just enjoy the spectacle before us. The pressure was on them, fighting for the coveted fourth place and Europe, not us. Earlier in the week Blackburn's David Dunn advised Brian Laws to select Eagles and Blake from the off, as they provided so much more danger. It was hard to disagree, with plenty of support for changing back to the 4-5-1 formation with Eagles and Blake providing the width.
For the first time in what seemed an age I was actually looking forward to another trip to Turf Moor. It was another chance to see real 'stars' and 'galacticos', and of course the famed Mancini scarf. They call it 'la moda' in Italy and it was coming to Turf Moor. Maybe too there'd be a tasty punch up between Mancini and Laws just like the one involving Moyes at Man City. Weren't these the home games we'd looked forward to; games against the 'big' clubs, City, followed by Liverpool and then finally the climax of the season, old rivals Tottenham. This was the glamour of the Prem, not the scruffy Blackburns or the bottom end Hulls and Portsmouths.
We were going down, we knew we were going down. Now perhaps we could go out not with nerves and nastiness, but with a bang and some real cheers and passion, rather than just a whimper accompanied by the swish of batons landing on peoples' backs. This was a game where I wanted to cheer and roar and feel good like I'd done before against United and Everton in games that seemed like they were ten years ago. And, I wanted Brian Laws, at last to get a few cheers himself.
In the week, City had just beaten Wigan with the human dynamo Tevez scoring three. At Eastlands early in the season Burnley were full of football, inventive, creative, took an early two-goal lead, lost it, and clawed back the draw, the one point in a truly dreadful away record. Surely we thought; this next game might just be a truly good night from which we could take home more, if belated, happy memories of our time in the Premiership and erase the spiteful, vicious images of Blackburn Sunday and a tainted game that was won by self-confessed cheating.