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There were some corking April Fools gags. I liked the club's attempt, a repro 1910 woollen shirt as worn by Tommy Boyle, this one modelled by Jay Rodriguez in special lightweight wool. On Clarets Mad there were two. It just happened to be the day of a Rovers v Burnley reserve game so information was issued that said everyone had to go by coach. And the second was an announcement that due to ground subsidence, games next season might be played at Blackburn Rovers while repairs to underground coalworkings were taking place.
Trouble is now, people spot them so quickly. They're looking for them as soon as they wake up. It is because of this the Tories announced that they will change April 1st to another day if they win the next election. Some of their ideas are really good. Perhaps the best one did indeed come a couple of days late after the 1st when the Clarets put out a spoof team and pretended to provide opposition for Man City. Boy it was hilarious.
Anyway, cold as it was, but with spring just about in the air, people venturing into gardens, B&Q filled with green-fingered shoppers, lawnmowers being inspected, lawns raked, greenhouses being fumigated and the goldfish coming up to the tops of ponds at long last (the bloody herons have eaten mine) - the Man City game approached. I can genuinely say I was looking forward to a game at long last after the nerves and bitten finger nails of the last three homes games. It didn't seem to matter any more what happened once we accepted our rightful place in the bottom three.
10,000 other people were not too distressed either, all buying early-bird season tickets for the next season, when you could have been forgiven for thinking that interest might have flagged significantly because of previous results.
Anyway Henry Mancini seemed confident enough: "Burnlee ees small pless… but ees veree hard pless… ees small club… they pley good… but lot off pashon… so ees diffeecolt game… but er we should er ween… we haf er the good playors… an… er I haff er di luckee scarf… I theenk we weell ween er 3 golls to zero… too good for er dem… dey don't ahaff the good playors good enoff to mek troble for us… Blek ees slow… Eagles ees running into troble all di time… Fletchor ees like er di botterfly… Nugent ees … ow you seh… di joke… my ammama canna runna fasta dan Cort… an I theenk di golkipper Jensen weel kick ball all time high eento air an we can er just er hed eet back… Tevez weell get ball an mebbe he score I theenk… er… all three golls… I don see thee troble from er thees game… an… iffa thee manager… er he donta geev me thee boll when eet ees throw fora us… I geev heem plenty wallop… beeg time… like I do Moyes."
Pre-match, manager Brian Laws had spent the week having a go at referee Mike Dean and his performance against Blackburn. Friday's Daily Telegraph had a full feature about it. Statistics show that no referee had given more penalties than Dean during the season. Laws announced it was a joke that he was refereeing the Man Utd v Chelsea game. Someone should have whispered to Brian that Burnley were in the Prem, (and therefore Brian was a Prem manager) maybe because Mike Dean had NOT given two reasonably justifiable penalties in the Play-off Final.
Before the game, I mentioned that having got the awful Blackburn game out of the way, this next one might be more of an exhibition game, seeing as how we were pretty much doomed anyway. My jest turned out to be sadly true as for 45 minutes Citeh ran Burnley ragged, producing move after move with devastating pace and skill.
Anyway the Thomas party elected to take bacon sandwiches and hot chocolate to eat for us tea in the ground as we watched the warm-up. City had Bellamy, Adebayor, Tevez, Barry, Toure and the old veteran, Vieira. No problem with him I thought, he must be older than Alexander. At left back they had the grey haired Sylvinho who must be 40 if he's a day. There was no indication of the impending storm to come - well two storms actually, as a torrential downpour reduced the pitch to a quagmire early in the second half, and prior to that the Man City storm that smashed three goals past Burnley inside the first nightmare six minutes after which more than a few people headed for the exits - or maybe pretended to, but in fact went for a consoling pie.
Manager Laws had elected to leave the club's best centre-back Bikey on the bench, play 4-4-2, restoring Eagles and Blake to the team, most of us happy with that; but in playing both Nugent and Fletcher had left the midfield as ever lightweight and undermanned and about as mobile as the bus to Bleak House. After the game, final score 1-6, manager Laws apologised for the team's performance and explained that, "The one thing tonight has taught me is that we cannot play with two midfielders because we are not good enough."
Darling, we could have told you that, 3 months ago.
By the end of the first half City had rattled up a staggering five goals and it was clear that what we feared at the beginning of the season, that humiliations and embarassments might lie ahead, had at last come to pass before our very eyes. The consolation was that it was Citeh, who I personally preferred to see in the top four more than Spurs or Liverpool.
How does that old song go; "Bewitched, bothered and bewildered." It pretty much summed up that first nightmare 6 minutes. Midfield and defence were sliced open like a knife through butter, in our case cheap butter, actually just margarine. For most of the first half I wondered if we'd only sent nine players out. Shattered and shell-shocked, mesmerised and paralysed, hypnotised and hermoginised; these were players overawed, over-run and overpaid. All I could think was thank God it was only Citeh, not Barcelona.
So at half time it was 0-5, reactions varying from anger to embarrassment, from disbelief to mild amusement. It could have been 10. The Thomas party found consolation in the picnic bag and finished the bacon sandwiches, along with mini Easter eggs for pud. Yum yum.
The second half was reduced to a farce in the mudbath conditions. Fortunately for Burnley, divine intervention and the downpour of monsoon proportions, made it a level playing field/swamp and the total unfairness of Citeh having all the best players became less of a problem. Everybody slithered and slid, slipped and slopped, forgot the ball was a yard behind them when it stuck in the water, struck passes that stopped dead, and quite soon looked like drowned rats.
Presumably Brian Laws must have told his team that they resembled something like a shower of sh**e at half time. 0-5 down they came out like a train, plunged into the water head first, splashed around heroically in the truly dreadful conditions, had us roaring and rocking in the dripping stands and very much made up for the horrors of the first half now that the Citeh passing game, speed, nimbleness, sharpness, and rapier thrusts were thwarted by the mud and the puddles. To our credit we drew the second half 1-1 and the loyal, appreciative and devoted supporters sang, and applauded and stuck by them with good humour and affection. Sadly, it was probably affection of the 'oh dear' kind, that comes with weary resignation and acceptance of being totally outclassed. Fletcher's goal was a cracker. "6-0 and you f****d it up sang the Burnley hordes, followed by a quick burst of "WE WANT TWO."
"Ole… ole… ole," we shouted as Burnley managed to string three passes together. "Call it off, call it off, call it off," we sang as the rain teemed down; and had the scores been level at 5-5, the referee probably would have, it was so bad. Mancini meanwhile stayed under the shelter, keeping his magnificent hair and precious scarf as dry as possible. It was Brian Kidd who was sent out to get wet.
The crowd with its good humour, in truth, were simply recognising that this was a night when little Burnley were temporarily in an unfair world and the opposition was not just from Manchester, not even from another planet, but in fact a distant galaxy. It was a chastening experience. One only hopes that the missing Burnley directors saw it on TV somewhere, and that the Operational Directors might have realised that they had dropped a clanger.
And yet for all that, in a perverse kind of way, it was a night to remember. We saw true galacticos. Half-paced though he was, rarely breaking into a trademark gallop, I can say I saw the legendary Vieira. Tevez was applauded from the pitch by the Burnley fans. We saw in the first half football of a quality that was sometimes breathtaking. Ok we contributed to the City goals by giving the ball away, with naivety, poor marking and by standing just gawping and watching as they danced past us; but we saw for 45 minutes real Premiership football, superb movement, sustained passing moves, the kind that only the super-rich and the upper echelon can produce. Because of this, I minded less about losing 1-6, or even 0-10, than losing 0-1 the week before to the dross from Blackburn. This was football that was educational and without the timely intervention by the weather that made football impossible, the score might indeed have been 0-10. About once every ten years you take part in a game when it is a sort of privilege to lose. Alas this was one of them. Unfortunately Citeh do have this habit of giving us a tonking. Thank God Goater wasn't playing.
"WE ween… ees eemportant we ween…" said Mancini afterwards still immaculate and dry as a bone unlike everybody else. "We are een top four… ees eemportant we are een top four… I nevair see five golls in first aff beefore… bella bella… bellissimo… bellissimo… mama mia…pizza, pizza… fantasteeco… maybee we pleh Burnlee every week… heh heh."
The camara switched to Brian Laws. "What the f***k am I doing here," said the expression on his face … as he looked shocked, bemused and dazed. "And dear God, the next home game is v Liverpool." The booing wasn't quite as bad as after the Wolves game, but it was there alright at half-time. His appointment as manager becomes more baffling by the game. The old adage 'you get what you pay for' comes to mind and in this case he was appointed on the cheap. Not every director was thrilled by it. The City fans roared their anthem 'Blue Moon'. But neither Barry Kilby nor Brendan Flood was there to witness the debacle. What might they have sung had they been there? Oh yeh, from Evita, 'Where Do We Go from Here?'
We, the humble fans, (miraculously over 10,000 have renewed season tickets) wondered one or two things. Was there any truth in the stories that Laws had lost the dressing room so quickly; that the players were as baffled as the fans by the appointment? Where was the team, the spirit and the never-say-die attitude, that for long spells played Arsenal off the park in December and but for a dodgy offside decision would have won 2-1? Why was Blake taken off at half-time, arguably Burnley's best player in that half? Why was the by-now creaking Alexander left on? Did McDonald really leave the ground at HT and leg it down the road to the 110 Club?
Our well known celeb supporter, thespian Richard Moore was in the crowd. Currenty appearing in that superb play, 'The Comedians', he could have been forgiven for thinking he was already watching them. Meanwhile, the jubilant City fans, and the City players, could be forgiven for going home to the tune of, "Singing in the Rain." If they weren't, they should have been. And Mrs T and me drove home trying to remember the words to 'Reasons to be Cheerful'. We couldn't. Funny that.