And so it goes on.....

Last updated : 21 February 2007 By Dave Blackburn
Wayne Thomas - Man of the Match
The result may not have been encouraging, and the performance served up by Steve Cotterill's Clarets was disappointing, with two changes made from the previous defeat at Wolves, Wayne Thomas and Chris McCann replacing Michael Duff and Steve Jones.

Certainly, after a first few minutes which can only be described very loosely as football, including a Leicester kick-off so poor even Burnley would have been ashamed, it was Burnley that took the impetus. The fact that the scores remained level up until the half-time break was more down to Burnley's finishing than anything Leicester could offer.

Andy Gray, James O'Connor and Steven Caldwell all could have hit the back of the net with headers, a Wayne Thomas cross almost found its way into the back of the net, and Chris McCann and Gray missed shots.

However, the closest we saw to a goal in the first-half was when Leicester's Levi Porter burst through the Burnley defence only to see his shot pushed wide by the impressive Danny Coyne.

Despite all of the missed chances from Burnley in the first-half, the most disappointing moment came in injury time. Ade Akinbiyi, in a move which summarised his performance quite accurately, found the ball just in front of him in the box, but reacted like a rabbit in the headlights of a truck, as he did so many times throughout the match. The ball was cleared, the half ended. Still the score was 0-0.

The talk at half-time was all about changes. Whilst Burnley had dominated, it was clear that we needed that extra little bit to hit the back of the net. The consensus in the stands seemed to be that young star Kyle Lafferty should come on for Akinbiyi, whilst Gudjonsson, who seems to think kicking the ball as hard as he can at a Burnley player is a pass, should be replaced by either Garreth O'Connor or Eric Djemba-Djemba.

However, it was the same Burnley side that started the second-half, and despite the game taking the same shape from the word go, the nearest to a goal in the opening stages was when Gudjonsson hit a free-kick high and wide. Then winger Wade Elliott was replaced by Steve Jones, a puzzling move to say the least. Jones was not to impress.

The next chance we were to see was on the hour mark, when ex-Tranmere striker Iain Hume saw a shot well saved by Danny Coyne. This was to signal the start of a spell of Leicester pressure, with substitute Elvis Hammond going one-on-one but failing to beat the Burnley stopper.

Just when it looked like Leicester weren't able to score, Burnley did it for them. Originally, it seemed like Wayne Thomas, who impressed throughout the match, had cleared the ball off the line, but the ball pinged back off fellow defender John McGreal and into the back of the Burnley net.

In typical Steve Cotterill fashion, he decided to make substitutions once we were behind, and sure enough, it was Djemba-Djemba and Lafferty coming on for Gudjonsson and.....Harley? Once again, Cotterill had refused to take off Akinbiyi, despite him looking unlikely to score, to put it politely.

But from then on, Burnley did come back into it. Moving into what can only be described as "A kind of 4-3-3" with McCann moving to left back, the chances started to come. However, they were not good chances, and the closest Burnley were to come was when Lafferty's shot across the face of the goal beat the 'keeper but went wide. The ball was less than a yard in front of Akinbiyi at the far post, all he had to do was kick it. Instead, he did the same as the rest of us and watched in dismay.

All in all, a disappointing performance again from Burnley. Leicester have to rank alongside the Barnsleys and the QPRs in this division in terms of the performance they gave at Turf Moor this season, yet we failed to score past them.

My man of the match was Wayne Thomas, who had his best game in a Burnley shirt for me, and special mentions go to James O'Connor and Chris McCann, who went against the general trend of disinterest and disappointment from the Burnley team. However, the main culprit of the night was Steve Cotterill, who once again got his tactics and his substitutions wrong for me.