Doom and Gloom at Turf Moor

Last updated : 28 November 2018 By Dave Thornley

It has been the recurring narrative of Burnley’s season so far; from “Burnley can play better”, through “Burnley should play better” and now, “Burnley must play better”.
On Monday night at Turf Moor Burnley spluttered and stumbled to yet another defeat; another shabby performance in front of their own supporters and another three points carelessly squandered.
Make no mistake about it, Burnley will entertain few teams worse than Newcastle during the course of this season and it is a most alarming state of affairs that so poor an outfit were allowed to escape with the spoils.
In last night’s match programme, Sean Dyche  declared that his team were getting closer to the standards that both he and the Premier League demands. Whilst one acknowledges that the match programme is a vehicle of club propaganda, on the evidence of last night, such a statement would appear wildly optimistic, if not delusional.
The concession of two early Newcastle goals, one a freak deflection, the other an example of poor set-piece defending, presented the Clarets with yet another mountain to climb. 
But a superb Sam Vokes header from outside the Newcastle penalty area meant that the Clarets at least established base camp, and for the remainder of the first half Burnley seized the initiative and showed every indication that they could launch an assault on the summit.
Frustratingly, however, the momentum drained away and Burnley’s attempts to rescue a point from the game deteriorated into tragi-comic pathos.
Ashley Barnes, whose greatest asset is his physical presence in the opposing penalty area, ended up being obliged to take corners, as the dead ball specialists, Brady and Defour, had been withdrawn to make way for Barnes and the ineffectual Jeff Hendrick.
If that were not enough, Joe Hart played almost all of stoppage time as an auxiliary midfield player with long ball after long ball being hoisted onto the grateful heads of Newcastle’s defenders.  It was all something of a shambles.
Poor as they are, Rafa Benitez has somehow managed to squeeze three consecutive wins out of his players. The pressure is now mounting on Dyche to produce something similar at Burnley.
He has his own career to look to; from being lauded – rightly – as one of the league’s best homegrown coaches, Dyche now faces the very real prospect of entering a second relegation to his CV. This would be a discordant note on which to end the tenure of Burnley’s best manager for half a century. 
But watching the game, it became increasingly apparent that Burnley are far too one-dimensional; the long ball which Burnley so often deploy is a relic of a bygone age; it is a tactic of last resort, except that Burnley tend to resort to it first.
 As it stands, Burnley’s midfield are stationed far too deep; they pick the ball up inside their own half and are thus too often left with a square ball to the wing; a hopeful ball down the channels; or the aforementioned long ball as the only viable options.
If those midfield players pushed just five yards further up the field; then the likes of Stephen Defour and Jack Cork could use their skills to play probing, defence-threatening passes. It is a policy which carries risk and requires courage; but Burnley’s current predicament calls for courage and risk taking.
More than ever, Dyche now needs support; from the stands, from the boardroom and above all from within the dressing room.
As a footnote, when I returned home from last night’s game, a message flashed up on my phone inviting me to “rate my visit to Turf Moor”. It took all the self-control I could muster to avoid flushing the infernal device down the toilet; it would have been a fitting metaphor for Burnley’s season so far.

Written by long suffering Clarets Mad guest writer Dave Thornley.