Division One goals galore from ex-Clarets

Andy Cooke celebrates his match winner against Ispwich

Stoke were in action today and they defeated fancied team Ipswich 2-1 and Andy Cooke scored his second goal in a week to win the game with just ten minutes left. This win took Stoke above Burnley and left us exactly where we started the weekend, in 20^th place.

Paul Shaw was on the mark again for injury hit Gillingham giving them a 1-0 lead at home against Sheffield United. His goal didn’t win the game for the Gills but did ensure they picked up a point in a 1-1 draw after Wayne Allison had equalised.

Pride of place though goes to David Johnson who completed his first Nottingham Forest hat-trick with two late goals at Grimsby. The 3-0 win takes Forest up to seventh but leaves sorry Grimsby rooted to the bottom with just two points from draws against Franchise and Bradford.

There was no doubt which was the match of the day, the Carrow Road clash between Norwich and unbeaten Portsmouth. They are unbeaten no longer, going down 1-0 to Norwich from an Iwan Roberts goal. This leaves Norwich in third place with Leicester still second after a 0-0 draw at Sheffield Wednesday ended a run of four consecutive wins.

The team formerly known as David Moyes’ Preston ruined a lot of treble chance coupons by not actually drawing at Derby, six of their previous seven games had been draws. They inflicted a third home defeat on Derby.

The best news of the day though came at Selhurst Park where Franchise FC yet again recorded the lowest gate of the season. As attendances drop for this disgraceful club they could muster only 2,077.

That game, a 1-0 defeat against Coventry didn’t encourage the referee to issue a single yellow card. In the remaining eleven games there were 49 yellow and 5 red cards with Mark Warren, in charge at Derby, sending off Warren Barton and booking nine other players. That was even better than Dean at Bradford.

Performance of the day has to be Reading who won 1-0 at Wolves with an Andy Hughes goal. The win takes them above Wolves who drop to 14^th place. The Wolves fans, and in particular Sir Jack Haywood, are not going to put up with that for long.

With so many former Burnley players scoring it is not surprising that we see some of them in the list of leading scorers, in fact one right at the top now.

8: David Johnson (Nottm Forest)
7: Alan Lee (Rotherham)
7: Paul McVeigh (Norwich)
6: Darren Byfield (Rotherham)
6: Jamie Cureton (Reading)
5: Brian Deane (Leicester)
5: Neil Shipperley (Franchise)
4: Andy Cooke (Stoke)
4: Malcolm Christie (Derby)
4: Richard Cresswell (Preston)
4: Paul Dickov (Leicester)
4: Ricardo Fuller (Preston)
4: Shefki Kuqi (Sheffield Wednesday)
4: Phil Mulryne (Norwich)
4: Paul Shaw (Gillingham)
4: Svetoslav Todorov (Portsmouth)

As promised we take a look at the attendances at all the grounds so far which sees Leicester now with the highest and in fact the three top places are taken by the three clubs relegated from the Premiership at the end of last season.

Six clubs have averages in excess of 20,000 and at the bottom seven clubs have averages below 10,000. Burnley are in 15^th place with an average of 13,227.

The averages attendances are: