Like watching paint dry

John McGreal - man of the match performance at the back

It’s been a difficult season right from the start with the lack of players but since the turn of the year we have sold our only likely source of a goal and our only really creative midfield player. The manager has said they wanted to go and that being the case they are both better off gone but it has left us with a side totally ill equipped for this level of football when it comes to trying to score goals.

In ninety minutes today against a distinctly average Leeds side, and that’s being kind to them, we have hardly mustered a single noteworthy effort on goal and Neil Sullivan, despite a penalty save, is the latest goalkeeper to have hardly earned his money.

We had become a side very reliant on Robbie Blake to provide the spark going forward and to score the goals and the simple facts are that we have scored just twice in five league games since he last played for us. To that we can add three cup goals, an own goal and Ian Moore doing what he does best, scoring against teams from lower levels in the cup.

You wonder just where a goal is going to come from and the only chance this afternoon was from the penalty spot and we even managed to miss that chance when it came.

Burnley started with just the one change from the side that had beaten Bournemouth a week earlier with Lee Roche returning for the departed Richard Chaplow who was to spend his afternoon watching Norwich beat West Brom.

Looking at the Leeds team it looked like Burnley of just a few years ago with the likes of Paul Butler and Sean Gregan, they looked every bit as big as Ronnie Jepson and Peter Swan had done at the end of their playing careers.

They are not the most imaginative of sides and couple this with Burnley’s problems going forward the first half was hardly a feast of entertaining football. At the cricket field end of the ground I cannot remember us once causing Neil Sullivan any problems but it wasn’t that much different at the other end until the last few minutes of the half.

The only entertaining feature was a cracking shot from former North Ender Sean Gregan who hit the woodwork, that is if corner flags are still made of wood. Gregan, hardly popular at Turf Moor needless to say got some stick but there was something even better to come in the second half.

With the clock ticking down towards half time Leeds finally produced something with youngster Aaron Lennon skipping past Mo Camara to cross low for David Healy who made no mistake.

The assistant’s flag ruled it out but apparently, not something I could see from my vantage point, he got it wrong and the goal should have stood. It was a let off and there was to be one more when right on half time the somewhat inept Brian Deane got his head onto a free kick but Brian Jensen made a terrific save at the expense of a corner.

It really had been a horrible forty-five minutes but there were cheers from the crowd, from all four sides, to welcome Brian Flynn onto the pitch to make the half time draw. We just wondered whether the former Burnley and Leeds midfielder could lift things for the second half.

Brian Jensen - another good peformance from the keeper

The answer to be honest was no, and things carried on just as they had in the first with neither side showing anything at all although you always suspected that Leeds were slightly more likely to score.

The gloom was lifted with one wonderful moment from Deane who surpassed anything that Gregan had achieved with his shot against the corner flag. From a position on the right inside the Burnley box he attempted a shot into the corner to Jensen’s right, incredibly it went out for a throw on the other side of the pitch and about 35 yards from goal.

The next time Leeds attacked though they had considerably more success. Again Lennon beat Camara, he gave him a really tough afternoon, and this time his cross was met by an unmarked Gylfi Einarsson who made no mistake to head home his first goal in English football.

Well surely that was it, trying to pull a goal back was going to be difficult judging what had gone on before. Steve Cotterill made a change and thankfully removed the inept John Oster, his contribution was worse than last week, and on came Jean-Louis Valois.

Nothing really improved but then referee made it more difficult for us by sending off Frank Sinclair. Webster and his two assistants had all had very poor games and got very little right all afternoon and he didn’t get this right either. He showed Sinclair a second yellow but this should have been a straight red card after he kicked out at Einarsson.

One down, ten men, and you’ve guessed it we suddenly came to life. Now if Webster had got little right up to this point he wasn’t going to change things now. He gave us a penalty that looked very dubious indeed, as Moore went down in the box.

He got up, he’s our penalty taker now, but his kick was as poor as they come and all Sullivan had to do was go the right way for a shot that lacked power or direction and was just the right height.

If that was a harsh spot kick then I really don’t know how he missed two blatant ones afterwards, the first for handball and the second for a push on McGreal that he was just a few yards from.

But it’s not the referee we need to be looking at, it is our own performance. It was dreadfully poor and only the defence can claim any credit and by that I mean the two central defenders and the goalkeeper, all of whom played well.

McGreal gets my vote just ahead of Jensen whilst Cahill played well although he could have been sent off early in the game. Nobody else had a good game for me although I thought Micah Hyde was the pick of the midfield.

Frank Sinclair was awarded the man of the match in the stadium – this is the club captain who got himself sent off for kicking out at someone with us 1-0 down. The announcement was laughed at, at least he didn’t say Trevor this time, but if anyone can explain this please let me know.

We are not going to be relegated, we’ll get the points we need to stay up no problem. But this sort of football isn’t going to help sell season tickets when we are crazily asked to pay for them again in April.

I’m not going to criticise anyone for the sales of Blake and Chaplow but we are a club that doesn’t need to sell players according to the Chairman and we really should have done something before now about boosting the squad.

The admission from the manager that he hasn’t yet had the opportunity to sit down with the Chairman is very worrying. We really cannot now undo all the good work of the first half of the season.

The teams today were,

Burnley: Brian Jensen, Frank Sinclair, Gary Cahill, John McGreal, Mo Camara, Lee Roche, Micah Hyde, Tony Grant, Graham Branch, John Oster (Jean-Louis Valois 69), Ian Moore. Subs not used: Danny Coyne, Paul Scott, Joel Pilkington, Matt O’Neill.

Leeds: Neil Sullivan, Gary Kelly, Clarke Carlisle, Paul Butler, Michael Gray, Aaron Lennon, Sean Gregan, Gylfi Einarsson (Danny Pugh 87), Jermaine Wright, Brian Deane (Michael Ricketts 87), David Healy. Subs not used: Frazer Richardson, Simon Johnson, Matthew Spring.

Referee: Colin Webster (Shotley Bridge).

Attendance: 17,789.