This match report contains 'foul language'.
"We just have to win today."
That was the consensus of the travelling faithful, and amongst the beer drinkers of Burnley. I lost count of the number of people I heard say this. We just had to win, didn't we?
Well, we didn't, and the reason we didn't is because we were absolute fucking rubbish. Burnley were abject. In a terrible game, we were the worse side, and we deserved to lose. We'd expected Sheffield Wednesday to fight, but for Christ's sake, we had a right to expect us, as an allegedly promotion-chasing side, playing at home, with most of a table between us, to be better than them. We weren't. And Sheffield Wednesday, playing a time-wasting game whenever possible, were no good at that. In fact, they might be the second worst team to have played at Turf Moor this season.
The worst team to have played there is Burnley, in this game.
Make no mistake, our promotion challenge is now falling apart. You can forget about a top two finish. Just forget it. It'll be less painful that way. We've now got to get 20 odd points together to make the play-offs. To do that, we have to get a grip, act like professionals and start playing again.
We've done nothing since Stan used the wrong tactics at KK Man City, and the absence of self-belief on Saturday was there for all to see. In the past, we've comforted ourselves that occasionally we will take a beating, but we respond. Not this time. The two games we've had in the League since our collapse at Maine Road have been dreadful. At Wimbledon we were awful, but we could kind of accept that, as we had a couple of injuries, we were away from home and a point isn't a bad thing. But that's only acceptable if you play better at home and knock over the rubbish. We never looked like doing so here.
Where were our chances? In the first half, when did we ever make Pressman have to do anything? Sure, we had more of the ball than them - inevitable, as Wednesday are happy to route one it - but what is the point of possession if you don't create chances? On the rare occasions when we got into their box, no one seemed prepared to take a shot at goal. Players seemed to want to set someone else up rather than take a chance themselves. Here, we were considerably hindered by the fact that Gareth Taylor clearly wasn't fit. He'd come back earlier than expected, and it showed. Of course, we don't have anyone else who's good enough. The absence of this one player had been enough to make us change the formation at Wimbledon. The thinness of our squad meant we had to pick him when unfit here. For a team with pretensions of getting into the Premier League, this is unacceptable. If we have to pick an unfit player because we don't have anyone else, we have to go and get someone else - and now. Taylor struggled throughout the match, and wasn't able to challenge for the ball, or exert any physical pressure on their defence. This made him a waste of space.
We were hopeless in midfield. With Branch at sort-of left back, Briscoe was sort-of playing there, alongside Grant and Ball. It was a mess. No one seemed to know what their job was. Ball was isolated when trying to cover on the right, while the rest kept getting in each other's way. If you're bad in midfield, the defence and attack will struggle too. So it proved here, although they would probably have been terrible anyway. Alongside the unfit Taylor we had Ian Moore, who of course will run and run, but without the supply from midfield, this one dimensional player couldn't change the way he played to impose himself on the game.
Defensively, we were a shambles. In the first half, only Gnohere, playing in poncy white boots (it looked like he was playing in his socks) emerged with a little credit, but against that he was at fault for their goal, and his game fell apart in the second half, so thinking about it, he was rubbish too. Cox was all over the place, West proved yet again that he can only play with a very good player in front of him, and Branch was hopeless. These days, it's a bit of a chicken and egg question whether the crowd abuse or poor play come first, but he was terrible here. Aside from a number of misplaced passes under no pressure, one moment summed up for me his inadequacies as a defender. With an attacker running at him, Branch moved back and towards the touchline, almost inviting the player in to have a shot at goal. This is basic, surely?
Their goal was everything to do with us. They didn't have to do anything special to score. Gnohere lost his man, Cox was nowhere, and Michopoulos couldn't catch it. So a nothing ball down the centre produced a soft goal, McLaren tapping in Ekoku's rebound.
Our one good chance of the first half came from the unlikely source of Alan Moore. Unlikely, because Moore has done nothing since our win at Palace. His long shot dipped onto the crossbar. It could easily have gone in. Moore reacted to this by quietly drifting out of the game after his positive start. In the second half, he was as bad as anyone else.
Under the stand, at another half time without a balti pie (and can anyone explain what's happening? How hard is it to make a pie?) conversation centred on how crap the game was and how we'd need to make changes. We did make a change, with Maylett coming on for Branch, playing initially on the right side of midfield, later swapping sides with Moore. But it didn't change anything. We were still hopeless. To get the only acceptable result against a desperately bad side, we were going to have to score two goals. It was impossible to see how we were going to get them. Hopes for a bright start after the teamtalk and tactical shuffle quickly faded. We were just as bad as in the first half.
We were fortunate to get the equaliser. A cross into a crowded box was needlessly, stupidly, handballed. You could clearly see the hand rise up above everyone else. Unquestionably a penalty, although it was interesting to see that the referee didn't see the need to book anyone. Now, in recent times penalties have been taken by Cook, Davis, Little and Payton, none of whom were on the pitch. It was scary to see Taylor stepping up to take it. Was he going to get down on his knees and try to head it in? I could barely watch, but as it happened he took it calmly and well.
Okay, you know what we had to do now. Unexpectedly getting back into it, we had to go for a winner. And we did... for a couple of minutes. At last we came forward a bit and played more attacking balls. We might even have scored, if West hadn't got in Taylor's way in the box. Sadly, it didn't last. Taylor challenged Pressman for a loose, legitimate ball, and Pressman went down for a lengthy spell of treatment (the physio's arse was sponsored by Chupa Chups, we noted). We never did anything after that.
When Pressman finally got back to his feet, he was clearly struggling. Time to get some shots in? You're joking. We never tested him. When he went down again and was taken off, he was replaced by an 18 year old keeper who's never played for the first team. Some of the Sheffield Wednesday fans in the pub didn't even know who he was. To our shame, this rookie player was not put under any pressure. He didn't have to get his gloves dirty.
That's because the rest of the game was played in our half, under the control of the opposition. We couldn't get over the half way line. Mystifyingly, Stan had chosen to replace Ian Moore with Papadopoulos. Moore wasn't doing anything, but surely he had more chance of scoring a goal than this raw and unproven reserve? Maylett didn't do anything either. There was one moment when he could have had a shot, but he turned away from goal to try to find someone else to take responsibility. Not good enough.
They had us to thank for their winning goal. Grant had been pissing about in midfield all day, and finally it cost us. Under absolutely no pressure, he played his umpteenth rotten ball of the day, straight to one of their players. One good pass from them later and the Sheffield Wednesday striker was through, duly scoring.
The scorer's name was, of course, Shefki Kuqi, a player we tried to sign but who Wednesday bought instead. The reason they got him was that they offered more money up front than we did. Isn't it worrying that we could lose out to this player to a club way below us? How far does our ambition go? We knew the laws of football decreed a Kuqi goal, but for him to score the winner, after we had played this badly, was sickening.
Game over, and even in the seven minutes of injury time - I thought there could have been more, given the number of stoppages, but let's be thankful for something - we never looked like we might threaten. They should have had a third, when Gnohere again lost his man, Kuqi racing towards goal. Gnohere caught up to bring him down for a clear penalty, but fortunately Sibon remembered he was a Burnley target, and lowered himself to our level. His penalty was dreadful, and even Michopoulos couldn't not save it.
That was the last kick of the game, as the referee mercifully ended it. Many had left by then. I can't think why I didn't. Those who had stayed to the end left to the sounds of 'Have a Nice Day'. What? Is someone taking the piss? Whichever tosser thought it would be a good idea to play this should be sacked.
So what can we conclude from this appalling match? For a start, the squad is not good enough. It's not big enough and it doesn't have the quality. Although they played badly here, we have a core of talented players - and that's it. The hangers on aren't good enough to play in the First Division, never mind the Premier League which we claim to aspire to - so let's get rid, and get some better ones in. If Papadopoulos isn't good enough - and he hasn't done anything to suggest he might be - then get rid. If Maylett was going to do anything, he would have done it by now. He can't be promising forever, and again made no impression in a game which offered him a big chance to impress. So, get rid. If the players in the squad aren't good enough, let's show no sentiment towards them. We need to recruit now. Of course, we need to bring in players for the long term, but we have to step up our efforts to bring them in now.
All season there's been a debate over whether Burnley are a one man team. The one man, of course, is Little. Clearly, that's a simplification. We have other good players. But you can't get away from the fact that our two bad patches this season (because, make no mistake, we're in one now) have coincided with Little's injuries. Without him, we're not the same team. Even when he has a quiet game, his presence attracts defenders and opens up opportunities for other players. With Little on the pitch, there's always the hope that, even when we're playing badly, he'll produce a chance. He's be quite within his rights to bang on Stan's door on Monday and demand a pay rise. With him in the team, we're play-off contenders. With him out, we're nothing special.
I was disappointed that, in the post-match think tank in the Ministry of Ale, some people talked about the referee. This was an irrelevance. I am sick of this lame old excuse that Burnley supporters drag out whenever we get beat. Sure, the referee was rubbish. They're rubbish in every game, and we moan about it when we get beat. The referee made some bad decisions, but the worst of the afternoon was not to send Gnohere off for the professional foul which produced the missed penalty. With the best referee in the world, we'd have lost this game.
So where do we go from here? We need a vast improvement to get back on track. A few more games like this will see us dropping down into the chasing pack. We need to address the fact that a couple of injuries - and we're only missing two players who would have started on Saturday - exposes our lack of strength in depth. We need to sort that out, fast. Sure, I know we've come a long way in the past few years. I know we're somewhere we've never hoped to be, and that for most of the season we've done superbly. But all that good work is now in danger of being undone. What's the point in doing so well if we're going to blow it by playing like this? This could be the chance of a generation. It would be criminal not to everything we can to seize the opportunity, and we've got to act now to sustain the challenge. I look to the businessmen on the board and wonder whether one of them can't find the resources. How much did Ray Ingleby sell his company for, by the way?
Regardless of what we've done this season, a performance as bad as this will never be acceptable under any circumstances. The only way Burnley can redeem themselves is by not playing as badly as this for the rest of the season. Don't let us down again, and we may forgive this woeful display.
A Little dose of reality