So we started the second half of the season as we finished the first, with another win. And, just like our victory against David Moyes' Preston, it was 3-2. There, however, comparisons end. Apart from a short purple patch after our second goal, we were poor, and perhaps fortunate to win. But as I always say, league tables don't come with footnotes. At the end, we had the three points. Again.
We were well aware in advance of the potential for a cock-up. It's in the nature of Burnley fans to worry about games like these. Top versus bottom will always look like a hiding to nothing. And I once slipped on a banana skin in Kirkgate Market in Leeds, so I know it's possible.
The journey was humdrum – after the excitement generated by an unexpectedly closed underground line – and the beer was acceptable, with the single pint limit at the Prince of Wales finally breached. Best pre-match sight was Dave Burnley's scarf, one side of which has undergone such a prolonged exposure to the elements that it is now pale blue and brown.
And so to Turf Moor. The team selection speculation centred on the hole left by Grant, the latest beneficiary of five card rotation. It would have been handy to have Paul Cook about the place. Without that choice, surely Weller would come into midfield and Briscoe go to left back? Wrong again! Second guessing Stan is turning out to be a futile sport. Our glorious leader is clearly convinced that Di Branchio is a left back, so Briscoe continued with Ball in midfield, the only change from Deepdale being the return of Taylor up front to make it 4-4-2.
In the early stages of the game I was absorbed in the task of trying to eat pie and peas without a spoon, having dropped my plastic cutlery somewhere en route to our lofty perch in row V. This is, actually, impossible. Anyway, in this sort of match you want an early goal. We got one! After a couple of tentative advances by Stockport, Little played a ball that everyone around thought was rubbish, until we realised only he had seen Taylor. Taylor's run into the box was abruptly halted for a clear penalty. Up, confidently, stepped our new penalty taker, Little. He waited for the keeper to guess which way he was going to kick it, then kicked it the other way. It was a good, routine penalty, and the ninth of the season for our resident genius.
An early lead, then. Plump up a cushion, sit back, watch the Clarets turn on the style and the goals will flow. Alas, Stockport hadn't read the script. Barely had the intrusive goal music faded away than they were level. Our defence and keeper were culpable. Stockport were invited into our box, NTG made a predictable mess of the cross, and an inadequately cleared ball fell straight to Stockport player McSheffrey, who calmly, softly, headed the ball into an unguarded net. Bugger.
After that, we stuttered. There were odd times when we got a move together, but in the main we lacked our usual coherence. The defence, in particular, struggled badly. Now I'm a big Cox fan, as I somewhat unfortunately found myself trying to say on the journey home, but our latest captain had an atrocious game. He never got to grips with Stockport's physical attack. Meanwhile, new Claret hero Gnohere was playing with the Sun in his eyes. It looked like that morning's huge spread on him in our top selling tabloid had gone to his head.
What this emphasised, for me, is how we rely on building from the back. Even in these high scoring times, the basis of the Ternent team is a strong defence doing simple things. When they make a mess of it, as they did here, the team loses its rhythm.
I don't want to get bogged down in criticism, as you'll have noticed that we won and remain top of the League. Because of that, I was disappointed with the supporters around me. I'm not so naïve that I expect an atmosphere at Turf Moor these days - we only get that at away games - but the negativity of the fans where I was sitting was astounding. Those around me only bothered to open their mouths to whinge and moan. There was nothing that you could call support.
Which brings us to Graham Branch. Di Branchio is not a left back. He is a player who possesses real skill, but he's trying to do a job that he can't. Unfortunately, after a couple of poor games, he is the latest target for crowd venom. These people have short memories. They forget how, when played in attack, he excelled at several away games last season. Birmingham and West Brom spring to mind. I speak as someone who initially didn't rate Branch, but gradually warmed to his admittedly erratic talent. Yet somewhere this week I read someone describing him as the worst player ever to wear Claret and Blue. What nonsense. We've seen some real shit over the years, and Branch doesn't come close. He's not even our worst recent left back. Branch isn’t a dreadful player. He's just a weak link in a very good side.
For people like me who started supporting Burnley when we were a crap Fourth Division side, this is the best team we have ever seen. I know it's hard to adjust to the fact that we are striving for something we assumed was never possible, but we are top of the League. If you can't support the team now, when can you? If this isn't good enough, what is? I always promised myself I wouldn’t become one of those people who shout 'get behind them'. But the times I laid into the team were when we were abjectly getting relegated from the division we now top, or struggling to stay in the division below. Recent years have seen some truly terrible Burnley sides. Can’t we start enjoying this now?
But it seems the crowd must have a hate figure, and for the moment, Branch fits the bill. I observed how the crowd wore him down. He started reasonably well, but buckled under the crowd's displeasure. I noted that, like Paul Cook when going through a bad patch last year, Branch makes it harder for himself by trying to do difficult stuff. Some players - in recent years, think Micky Mellon or Mark Ford - will hide when the going gets tough, try not to draw attention to themselves. Others, like Branch and Cook, will try harder, attempt ambitious things that don't work, and make things worse for themselves. So every missed pass, every blind alley run, brought greater crowd aggression. Mistakes that would have been tolerated from others were seized upon. Cox spent the game losing his man, but was applauded. Gnohere was all over the shop, but this is amusing. Branch wasn't even the worst player on the pitch. Dean West was the pick of the defenders, for heaven's sake!
Having got bogged down in criticism, back to the match. Which was grim. Stockport played survivalist football, of the kind you normally see from lower placed sides in cup games. They played a rigid offside trap, to which the linesman consistently gave the benefit of the doubt. Their keeper kicked the ball a very long way indeed. They scrapped in midfield, to the point of dirtiness, and for once it was the opposition that picked up the bulk of the cards. Up front, Kuqi was hard to play against. In other words, he's an aggressive, nasty sort of player. I'm surprised Souness didn't sign him. Compare what he gets away with to Taylor, who again was penalised every time he competed for the ball. What sin has this man committed to upset the guild of referees?
If you could win football matches on points, we would have edged the first half. Of what chances there were, we had the better, including a shot by Little and a header from Taylor, while NTG was poleaxed in one challenge from Kuqi. For a couple of minutes it looked like Cennamo might come on.
Half time was met with gratitude as a break from the dismal fare. After cheering Billy Hamilton onto the pitch, it was time to avoid the cheerleaders and pop under the stand to monitor the impressive growth of Shaggy Dog's stomach. Dog only allows himself a curry when Burnley win, which means he's now had fifteen this season.
The half time verdict of the cognoscenti was that, although we were playing badly, Stan would remind the team of how we have come to be top, and we would emerge playing better. Alas, no. It was Stockport who raised their game, particularly when their new signing Luke Beckett came on. Beckett is a decent player, but he's not a world beater. He wouldn't get in our team. But with Stockport looking to attack, we surrendered possession and allowed ourselves to be pushed back. We really missed Grant, as without him there was no one to build in midfield. For a time, we just could not clear the thing. We played ourselves into trouble. Perhaps we had trouble picking the ball out against Stockport's all yellow kit. Stockport could, arguably should, have taken the lead.
They had a couple of decent chances, particularly when NTG saved Kuqi’s shot. The rebound fell to another Stockport player, Ellison, who shot just wide. Had he shown more composure, it would have been a goal.
They would have cause to regret their poor finishing a few minutes later, as we showed them how easy scoring can be. By now, Weller had come on for Alan Moore, who had had a patchy game of it, giving the team better shape and balance.
Our goal owed much to the customary hard work of Ian Moore. Chasing yet another lost cause, Moore managed to keep the ball in and played it back to Little. Glen’s instant cross was perfect, and Taylor was, as he so often is, well placed to head home his ninth of the season, catching up with. All headers! Perhaps we could sponsor his head?
We could consider ourselves lucky to be ahead, but on the other hand, it was a goal brought about by hard work mixed with real quality. Suddenly, we remembered how to do this football thing. For about the next ten minutes we were brilliant, passing, moving, running rings around the opposition. This spell brought the third, decisive goal. Again, it was made by Little. People said Little had a quiet day. While not spectacular as we know he can be, Glen had a hand in all three goals, scoring one and setting up the other two. Not bad for a quiet day. He ran and produced another fine cross – something he used to be criticised for not doing – and Ian Moore was there at the post to prod in a goal against his old side that all his effort deserved.
The game gradually petered out after that. We crept back into our shells, but Stockport couldn’t muster a convincing response. Stan made his substitutions, Armstrong replacing Branch, to the delight of the crowd, and then late on, Papadopoulos getting a rare run out for Ian Moore. Briscoe reverted to left back, while Armstrong joined Ball into midfield, as if to emphasise the stupendous nature of Stan’s achievement. In a week when Wolves reacted to a couple of bad results by lashing out a few more million on a striker, we were finishing with two free transfer veterans in the middle. Ball even turned with the ball at one point! As for Papa, I love the way his name arcs across his back instead of taking a straight line. He didn’t have much time to impress, but I thought he looked lively.
Far into injury time the ref felt Stockport deserved something, so he gave them a penalty. I’ve read since that it was for a handball, but I maintain that it was really given on grounds of sympathy. No way could it have been intentional, and not a single Stockport player appealed, which for me is the clincher, as players appeal for anything they think they might get. It summed up the referee’s interventionist, meddling and fussy approach to the game. Perhaps he just wanted to make sure we got our favourite new scoreline again. 3-2 is the new 1-0. Stockport duly despatched it. No big deal, but then way past the stated three minutes they won a corner. If they’d scored from that, this ridiculous decision would have cost us.
Game over, it became one of those matches best instantly forgotten. We get the points, we move on. Most 3-2 wins are more exciting that this.
We moved on to the Ministry of Ale. They don’t have a hold button on their remote control, so page 325 of Ceefax flicked between its four sections. We cheered each time the top of Division One came on. The other results couldn’t have been better, too. It’s almost as if no on else is trying. After that, it all got a bit predictable, although I should mention that the next day all the menus on my mobile phone had been changed to Turkish. I had to find a Turkish-English translation website to work out how to change them back again.
It's possible to feel a bit sorry for Stockport. Really. As we rise, we must bear no grudges. Younger readers may find this hard to believe, but there was a time when Stockport considered themselves our deadly rivals. Back in the old lower division days, they unilaterally decided to hate us, although we could never be bothered to reciprocate. I guess they must have dropped that now, as there was no one in the away end, and you turn out against your rivals, don't you? (The increased crowd was entirely due to the presence of more home fans. It seems that people have finally cottoned on to the fact that we’re top and we keep winning.)
So yes, I could find it in my heart to feel slightly sorry for Stockport. They didn't get the breaks. They could have gone ahead, but they didn't. This is what happens when you get relegated. We had a season of this in 94-95. You blame bad luck, not bad finishing, or bad defending, or the fact that, most of the time, quality will eventually triumph over all the fighting spirit in the world, as it did here. The fact is that, even when nowhere near our best, we were better than Stockport. Our goals came from good moves. They couldn’t finish theirs.
But enough about them. As for us, this result kept us riding high at the top, and gave us, albeit for one night, the extraordinary fact of a seven point lead. This result means that, at Christmas, Burnley will be top. Page 325 will somehow be incorporated into the festivities in my house.
Who’s going to be the Christmas number one? Burnley, of course.
Christmas Number One