O'Neill, Cisak and the QPR & Ings awards

Last updated : 01 November 2013 By Tony Scholes
Alex Cisak withdrew his claim

The loan is that of Luke O'Neill who has had an eventful last couple of weeks during his loan at York. He was forced, due to injuries, into playing in midfield against high flying Chesterfield. He scored too, his first ever Football League goal, in a 2-2 draw.

During the week he had two assists as York beat Scunthorpe 4-1, one of them setting up Wes Fletcher for a smart finish.

He's played five league games and one Johnstone's Paint Trophy game since starting his loan at the beginning of October and it has now been extended with O'Neill remaining at Bootham Crescent until 4th January 2014.

News this week has also revealed we've got a one handed goalkeeper. Well, not quite, but second choice goalkeeper Alex Cisak went to court to sue surgeon Bhaskar Bhowal after he claimed he'd been allowed to resume training before a wrist fracture had fully healed.

The court was told that Cisak could only save a handful of shots before pain set in, that he could only train at around 75% but John Whitting QC, representing Bhowal, referred to the Preston tie when Cisak won the man of the match on Clarets Mad.

He said: "It is difficult to see how a goalkeeper playing at an extremely high level can get rave reviews if he could only use one arm," this after Cisak had indicated he'd made all his saves with his left arm.

Cisak eventually withdrew the claim but was told to pay the surgeon's costs, and I would imagine that will be a sizeable amount.

Sean Dyche admitted: "We knew about it. We know there's something that needs work and we look to improve that. The reality is we've watched him, we've seen what he can do, we've seen him play for our own first team.

"It's hard for players to be 100 per cent all the time, any player, whether it's knee injuries or whatever."

Onto the awards, and rightly they are coming thick and fast for Burnley. Dyche won the manager of the month for September and it would be a very strange decision indeed if he wasn't to win it for October after our 100 per cent league record during the month.

He'll follow Danny Ings who has just been announced as the winner of the PFA Fans' Player of the Month, an award he also won in September. This is good news for Clarets Mad too; this season, for the first time, these awards are the result of voting carried in conjunction with the company responsible for the Mad football sites, including Clarets Mad.

The news of his October win came today and yesterday the club received news that our win against QPR has landed us the LMA Performance of the Week Award, determined by a panel comprising of Howard Wilkinson, Sir Alex Ferguson, Joe Royle, Dave Bassett and Barry Fry.

The award, a specially engraved crystal football, will be presented to our manager. We last won this award in the 2011/12 season, picking it up twice in just a few weeks for away wins at West Ham and Middlesbrough.