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Burnley can score goals, so can Southampton. Burnley also have a capacity for conceding goals too easily, so do Southampton. All of our televised games last season produced five goals. In three of our five previous home games at least one goal had been scored in the first seven minutes. With all that in mind I suspected that, with goals expected, it could all end in a 0-0 draw. That theory was soon thrown out of the window.
Third minute of the game, Bradley Wright-Phillips 1-0 to Southampton. Ninth minute, Stern John hits a shot that cannons off one post onto the other and into Gabor Kiraly's hands. Tenth minute, Steven Caldwell is substituted. Thirteenth minute, Wright-Phillips hits the post. Fifteenth minute, Jason Euell heads home 2-0 to Southampton.
It was a quarter of an hour of shambolic defending by Burnley, the home crowd were shell shocked, and the only saving grace was that we were only two goals behind. Wright-Phillips kept onside to break through for the first and Euell's goal might as well have been a free header given Alexander's defending.
It wasn't just the scoreline, and that was worrying enough, but they'd just gone through us like a knife slicing through butter. We'd no answer to them and defensively it was as bad as anything I've seen for some time.
How do you get back into a game like that? Basically for some time we didn't, Southampton could have had more, but it remained at 2-0 and given their own defensive frailties there was always that glimmer of hope that we might just get back into it and we did.
Andy Gray held the ball up well, laid it off to Chris McCann and the rest was down to the young Irishman who skipped through before placing his right foot shot past Kelvin Davis. It was the lifeline we needed and almost immediately we came close to levelling things but Gray put his header wide.
The leading scorer had one more chance in the first half and I was convinced it had gone in but his curling shot had unfortunately gone just wide of the right hand post. Still 2-1 at the interval was better than we deserved and there was still a chance for us.
We had to ensure there were no more mistakes at the back, but with only six second half minutes gone we were two goals behind again and it was another avoidable goal.
It all came, hardly surprisingly, from a corner. Where was the communication when Clarke Carlisle headed the ball out for that corner? It was unnecessary but again we didn't defend it well enough. The flag kick was rolled back and when the cross came in surely Gabor Kiraly should have gone for it. He didn't and there was John at the back post to head home easily against another poor aerial challenge, this time from McCann.
If we'd given ourselves a chance with our goal we looked as though we'd thrown it away again although just a few minutes later we should have had a penalty. My first thoughts were that it was the assistant who should clearly have seen it. He should, but so should referee Nigel Miller from his vantage point, but he didn't and nothing was given.
We made changes, on came Alan Mahon and Ade Akinbiyi and it was these two who combined to give us a late chance. Mahon did well to get the ball in there and when he got a further touch it dropped for Ade who hit home.
Could we rescue a point from nowhere? The answer unfortunately was no. We didn't deserve one, but make no mistake we'd have taken it. However, it wasn't to be and we'd lost for the first time at home in the league this season.
The problems were all at one end. Defensively this Burnley side is currently not good enough and again we've added to the number of goals conceded from set pieces. Three goals against is not good enough, the first time we've conceded this many in a game this season and the first time at home since Southampton hit three against us last season.
It has to be better, it is costing us points. We didn't play well in this game but we offered more in attack than we might have expected after that first fifteen minutes. It improved for me at the back when David Unsworth came on but it still wasn't good enough.
We remembered an old friend yesterday who passed away a year ago. He used to say that Cotterill could do defence but he wasn't convinced he could do attack. I don't know what he'd make of things just now.
I don't think we are as bad a side as so many people will try and have you believe, but we've got to stop conceding so many goals. We've got to cut the number of balls getting into our penalty box, both from wide positions and through the middle, and we've got to defend set pieces better. Then we'll have a chance. We cannot afford many fifteen minutes like the one at the beginning of this game.
The teams were;
Burnley: Gabor Kiraly, Graham Alexander, Clarke Carlisle, Steven Caldwell (David Unsworth 10), Stephen Jordan, Wade Elliott (Ade Akinbiyi 69), John Spicer, Chris McCann, Kyle Lafferty, Robbie Blake (Alan Mahon 57), Andy Gray. Subs not used: Brian Jensen, Jon Harley.
Southampton: Kelvin Davis, Philip Ifill, Wayne Thomas, Jhon Viafara, Gregory Vignal, Nathan Dyer, Inigo Idiakez (Andrew Surman 86), Christian Dailly, Jason Euell, Bradley Wright-Phillips, Stern John (Grzegorz Rasiak 70). Subs not used: Bartosz Bailkowski, Rudi Skacel, Marek Saganowski.
Referee: Nigel Miller (County Durham).
Attendance: 10,944.