Youth team held against Carlisle

Cayne Hanley - second red card of the season

Terry Pashley will not be happy after what was a poor display by his league leaders and was made worse by the totally unnecessary sending off of Cayne Hanley, his second red card of the season.

The game was there to be won easily, but with ten men it was always going to be difficult and in the end Carlisle wore us down with a succession of long balls into our half and finally got an equaliser in stoppage time. It shouldn’t have happened as we wasted good possession and missed chances.

We started much the brighter of the two sides, and it was easy to see why Carlisle are struggling in the Youth Alliance League, but things degenerated quickly as we were brought down to their level.

There’s no doubt though that Burnley are missing the injured players, Ryan Townsend, Marc Pugh and Joe Booth although Booth did come on as a second half substitute.

Carlisle missed the best chance of the first half when one of their strikers controlled the ball well inside our box only to blaze his shot well over the bar with only Michael Hale to beat.

We huffed and puffed without creating too much and Cayne Hanley squandered the best chance when he cut in from wide on the right of the box but shot over.

The game then turned against the Clarets after half an hour when we won a free kick just inside the Carlisle half. The ball was placed for the kick when the referee blew and raced into the penalty box. After a few words with Hanley he sent him off indicating use of the elbow.

This is the second such incident this season for Hanley, he went in the same way in the home win against Wigan. He was left in no doubt by Pashley that it was no acceptable.

That made it harder but in the last minute of the half we won a corner. Nicky Platt took it for Neal Trotman to out jump the defence and score with a good header. That was 1-0 at half time and probably deserved.

During the second half we were in control, despite being a man down, and missed numerous chances whilst although they didn’t give up Carlisle did not look like scoring. They won lots of possession as we run out of steam but created little of note although the defending was at times frantic.

Platt, Kyle Lafferty, Alex Taylor and Ali Akhbar all had opportunities to settle it but they all failed to score and in the end a hotly disputed equaliser earned Carlisle a draw they did not deserve.

The Burnley players protested but the referee was having none of it and waved away the protests before blowing the final whistle less than a minute later.

It was a disappointing result against poor opposition but tiredness set in after playing so long with ten men and we found it more difficult to close them down effectively.

A special word of praise for Alex Taylor who was again in magnificent form – he ran and chased without ever giving up and although it is a huge step for him he must be getting close to a call up for the first team bench.

The Burnley team today was:

Burnley’s Fixtures and Results

League Table (currently before today’s game)