Five on the run for youth team

Darrell Avery - won some vital tackles as the Clarets held on to their lead

Kyle Lafferty came into the side in place of Cayne Hanley who was suspended following his dismissal against Wigan on the 22^nd of last month. Otherwise it was an unchanged team from the one that won the cup tie against Blackpool last Saturday at Gawthorpe.

Lafferty made his mark quickly and gave us the lead after just two minutes with what was our first attack. The ball broke loose in the box, Rochdale failed to clear, and the Northern Irish striker had the relatively easy job of beating the keeper from ten yards.

As has been the case all season we passed the ball around well but on this occasion with no real end product. Leading scorer Alex Taylor did have an excellent opportunity to double the lead when put clear but he got the ball stuck under his feet and the ‘Dale keeper saved.

In fact the home side were having the better of the play and did get the ball in the net but everyone, except the home forward, had stopped as the referee had already blown for offside.

They did get a couple of shots in at our goal that Michael Hale had to deal with but other than that they posed little threat.

Rochdale got on top during the second half and had much more of the possession and sensed that they could get something out of the game. But they didn’t seem able to find that decent final pass nor did they have anyone with an eye for goal – otherwise they could have been back in the game.

The Clarets had a lot of defending to do in the final stages and the two substitutes, Darrell Avery (on for Kyle Lafferty on 70 minutes) and Adam Jones (who replaced Tom Ince at half time), bolstered things up for us with Avery especially winning the ball in a number of strong tackles. It meant that Hale had just one difficult effort to deal with which he palmed away to his right.

Despite the struggle it ended in a 1-0 win, a fifth successive victory. Mind you, if you still win when you are playing badly then it cannot be all bad.

Coach Terry Pashley was far from happy with the performance and that for the first time this season. Hopefully it will be nothing more than a blip and we will be back to form when Blackpool are back at Gawthorpe next Saturday in the league.

We lined up;

Michael Hale, Rob Henry, Neal Trotman, Chris McCann, Martin Reilly, Marc Pugh, Joe Booth, Nicky Platt, Tom Ince (Adam Jones), Kyle Lafferty (Darrell Avery), Alex Taylor.

Burnley’s Fixtures and Results

League Table (prior to today’s games)