Waiting for the moon
Burnley 2 Birmingham
City 2
Report by Firmo
As a rule, I avoid
pre-season friendlies. In a ten year span down South the odd exception
has been made for intriguing visits to places I haven’t seen
before (Dawlish and, err, Douglas, although never again). Occasionally,
too, a family visit North coincides with a home friendly, and then
it seems stupid not to go. Quality of opposition doesn’t really
come into it. If I’m in the area and there’s a game on,
I’ll go. This match fell into that second category. Up for a
significant birthday on the Sunday, it would have been daft to travel
up on the Saturday when there was a Burnley team to be seen playing
at Turf Moor.
The minute a pre-season
friendly starts, I remember why I tend not to go to them. They’re boring.
They’re like a meaningless end of season match, but with lower attendances.
And an even worse atmosphere. And less meaning. The 90 minutes seem much
longer.
As these things go, this
wasn’t a bad pre-season friendly. It was a beautiful, sunny day. The
match didn’t have the torpidity of many such encounters against minor
premier league opposition. We saw four goals, and Burnley only conceded two
of them. True, it wasn’t a good crowd. Birmingham never came up for
league games, so why would they start now? Meanwhile, at the Jimmy McIlroy
end, it’s a while since I realised that the top tier seats spell out ‘Turf
Moor’. Against that, it only cost a tenner to get in, which is about
the price football should be. Another positive was that we’d had a
chance to sample the delights of the excellent new Bridge Bier Huis, another
welcome addition to Burnley’s burgeoning beer scene, before the match.
Just a pity that we didn’t know the kick off had been put back until
quarter past one until we were too close to Turf Moor. Apparently Birmingham
were late turning up.
Burnley lined up as expected,
with Jensen in goal, Roche and Camara the full backs, Branch and Gnohere
in central defence, Little, Weller, Chaplow and Alan Moore across in the
middle
and Ian Moore and Blake up front. Once again we could only muster four on
the bench, in the form of the out of favour Grant, West, O’Neill and,
surprisingly, another one from the Miller / Scott dynasty, Paul.
I took some positives from
this game. The players are definitely leaner and fitter this time round.
Ian Moore and Blake both looked particularly trim. We were bright going forward.
Blake twisted and turned well and Ian Moore was very up for it. Moore lashed
in a great long distance shot for our first equaliser to continue his good
pre-season run. What a shame that his needless act of petulance towards the
end of last season means he’s having to sit out the early season games.
As for Little, it never quite came off, and he sometimes tried to beat one
man too many, but there were glimpses of the old Glen, and he was always
involved.
Star man for me was unquestionably
Chaplow. How he didn’t get official man of the match is anyone’s
guess. He certainly deserved it. We must always be wary about heaping too
much expectation on those still young shoulders, but he really looked the
part. He harried, he fought for the ball, and when he got it he passed to
another Burnley player. Very few of his passes didn’t find their man.
If you’d heard we’d signed a new player called Chaplow and you’d
seen him in this game for the first time, you’d have come away thinking
we’d signed a good ‘un.
Of course, what I’d
be asking if I was reading this would be: what were the new players like?
With Jensen, it was hard to tell. He’s certainly a big bloke, but he
wasn’t
particularly tested in this game, and wasn’t at fault for either goal.
We shall see. He was certainly the best Burnley goalkeeper I’ve seen
for several months.
Roche and Camara are clearly
both fullbacks who like to get forward. Stan said he was looking for more
pace – a vital quality in the modern game – and these two certainly
have it. They both got up and created possibilities. On the down side, Camara’s
first touch was dreadful. A couple of times he ‘controlled it’ far
away. Those of a particular vintage were already recalling John Francis.
Perhaps Camara will be this season’s cult player.
Roche, meanwhile, occasionally
looked vulnerable when attacked, and was responsible for Birmingham’s
second goal, when he never got to grips with Dunn, who held him off before
finishing well from just inside the box, placing the ball over Jensen’s
reach.
Dunn had been given predictable
stick, and retaliated in the best way. I found this all somewhat confusing.
He fell out with Souness. He wanted to leave. Surely he can’t be all
bad? The jeering at least gave the game some edge, and perhaps got to Dunn
a little, as he reacted once or twice. Tip to premier league managers: here’s
a player you can wind up. We even had another brief ‘handbags’ moment
in the second half, which seems to have become a feature of the pre-season
games. We seem to have plenty of aggression. There’s an unpleasant,
niggling edge to this Birmingham side that makes them a hard team to like.
Stern John, for example, at one point pretended to have been whacked in the
face, which is a curious thing to do in a friendly when you haven’t.
Perhaps they were just tired, having recently returned from some Mickey Mouse
contest in the far East, while we were strategically engaged in trying to
crack the lucrative Isle of Man market.
The other obvious observation
about the new players on display is that there wasn’t enough of them,
and this is where I worry. I think many of us applauded the summer clear
out as the right thing to do. It filled me with optimism. But I think it’s
fair to say we’d expected a few more new faces by now. Nine or ten
players were suggested. So far, we’ve got someone who can’t play
yet, a goalie and a couple of fullbacks. This does not a new team make. The
rest of it was pretty much as you were. This is not all bad. We have some
talented players going forward – Blake, Little, Moore (Ian) and Taylor,
if fit and not sold. Add in the new promise of Chaplow and Weller on his
day and you’ve got elements of a side certainly good enough to stay
in this division, which of course equals success. There are, however, two
problems. The first is that we just don’t have enough players. Injuries
and suspensions will tell. The fact that in a pre-season game we only had
four subs speaks volumes. Remember when Stan used to sub all eleven players?
In the squad list on the back of the programme, adverts fill in the blank
space under Burnley’s squad, while Paul Scott, still a scholar, came
on wearing no. 23. It was interesting to look at the bench and consider that
we could only bring players on who would make us weaker. In a league game,
chasing an equaliser, you would not want to be looking at that bench to turn
things round.
The second problem is the
same one we had all last season: we are a team without a core. It seems to
me we’re a pretty good team around the edges, and the new fullbacks
have added to that, but we don’t have enough in the middle. We still
need at least one commanding central midfielder and one stalwart central
defender. There are other things we could do with, like a back up goalkeeper,
but arguably we could get by. A central midfielder and a central defender
are absolute necessities, and without them we are going to struggle. We needed
them last season, and we need them even more now, particularly after the
loss of Diallo.
This game confirmed my
one big fear for next season, in that we will not get away with playing Branch
and Gnohere at the back. With that combination, we will leak goals. This
will particularly be the case if they are left exposed by weakness in midfield.
Even the tendency of Roche and Camara to go forward may count against us
if they leave gaps at the back. At the moment, a repeat of last season may
well be on the cards. We should score a few, but we are going to give plenty
away.
Branch is a player I like,
but he isn’t a central defender. He will try hard, and his speed and
some ability in the air will get him out of trouble some of the time, but
he doesn’t have the instincts of a defender and his positioning is
often awry. He was also directly responsible for the opening goal, where
he underhit a far too casual back pass and made it easy for Horsfield to
nip in and score. Meanwhile, hopes that Gnohere will recover his promise
are fading fast. He can still excite when breaking forward – he had
a trio of attempts to score from a header at one point, which at least amused
us – but he doesn’t seem capable of getting through 90 minutes
without a blunder, and gets lost too easily. I want him to be good again,
and believe he could possibly be rescued if we had an excellent central defender
to play alongside him, but next to Branch in an unfamiliar position, it’s
a recipe for confusion.
The big worry I left the
game with is that next season will be a relegation struggle if we do not
add to our midfield and shore up our defence. These are the positions in
which I hoped to see players come in this summer. Let’s hope and pray
that Stan has a few plans up his sleeve yet. Perhaps they’re still
working to bring players in and there are surprises to come. If we don’t,
we’ll certainly need to do so as the season goes on. Filling those
positions could be the difference between staying up and going down.
I will take some encouragement
from the fact that we came from behind twice, which shows good spirit. The
second was a penalty again – one perhaps fortunately given for a challenge
on Ian Moore – that was expertly and accurately put home by Blake.
And that was that, as the
substitutes did nothing much and the game dragged to its tardy end, the lateness
of the start exacerbated by a needlessly long half time, before we were released
to go and check whether the beer in the Bridge was as good as we remembered.
It was. Like all pre-season friendlies, this was a game that will soon be
forgotten. As for whether the negatives are going to outweigh the positives
next season – well we’ll soon know, won’t we?
Team: Jensen, Roche, Camara
(Scott, 72), Weller (West, 62), Branch, Little, Blake (O'Neill, 72), Ian
Moore, Alan Moore (Grant, 59), Gnohere, Chaplow.
Firmo's man
of the match: Chaplow.
"As with all articles on the site, the views
expressed in the match reports section are those of the individual contributor,
and do not necessarily reflect the view of the Burnley FC London Supporters
Club."
