Clarets lack wit and width
Oldham 1 Burnley 1, 10th April 1999
Firmo
In the circumstances, a point was a good result
here. Those circumstances included Glen Little's absence, allegedly due to a dose of flu.
But that wasn't so much of a problem as our manager's ill-judged response to it. The
return of Andy Cooke, though welcome, in Little's place meant a change of formation. We
played 5-3-2. And it didn't work.
It was perhaps typical for our manager to get it half right.
At last we got the second striker we all (including, surely, no one more than Andy Payton)
had been craving. But we got it at the expense of a wide player who might get the ball to
those strikers. We fielded a team without any width.
We picked the wrong formation and tried to play the wrong
way. Without width, the strikers played with no support, the midfield lacked any outlet,
and the fullbacks looked exposed with no one in front of them. As if this wasn't bad
enough, when Oldham were palpably there for the taking, and were clearly on the ropes
after Payton's equaliser, we took our foot off the gas and settled for the point. We shed
attacking players. The substitutions were poor; the wrong players went off, the wrong
players came on, the wrong players stayed on.
Perhaps Ternent expected Johnrose to supply the width. But
Johnrose was bloody awful. Everything he lunged at went wrong, and we didn't even have his
runs into the box as compensation.
So yes, in the circumstances, a point was a decent result.
But here, our manager and his tactics were obstacles to be overcome. And unlike the wind
which swirled around the ground and made control difficult, this was something we should
have been able to do something about.
In the first half we were awful. If we won a ball, I can't
recall it. Neither could it be said that we produced a single piece of creative play.
Against a good side we would have been in deep trouble, but never let Oldham be called a
good side. They seem to be an odd collection of cast offs and misfits, with huge financial
problems off the pitch, plunging down the table at the hands of an inexperienced manager.
In other words, they're us last season.
They had previously caught Crichton out of position for a
narrow miss, with Brass clearing off the line, before they took the lead. Cowan made a
hash of a backpass, and the result was goalmouth mayhem. Brass almost scrambled it clear,
but as he stretched for it a second time, one of their young players shot home from close
range.
The half time 1-0 scoreline had a look of inevitability about
it. They simply weren't good enough to threaten our goal twice. We couldn't cope with our
tactics. You have to question the wisdom of changing the team formation because one player
is injured. Isn't that what you have the reserves for? If the formation is important, why
not pick the player in that position in the reserves? If they're not good enough for
occasional first team duties, what's the point of having them? In this case, that
replacement would have been Brad Maylett. He may just have done well.
The game needed something. Along with everything else, the
first half had been plain dull. Having arrived in Manchester at 10.30, we had, of course,
struggled to the ground just in time for the 3.00 kick off. As expected, the away end was
pretty full. The usual arguments had been had with the stewards. What would they do if
people turned up and it was full, I asked one. Lock people out, he replied. In the end,
we'd snatched a few seats down the front, surrounded by kids. I attempted to moderate my
language. I limited myself to calling our manager an idiot, which I thought was fairly
restrained in the circumstances. But sat down there at pitch level during that boring
first half, I experienced one extraordinary thing. It took me a while to put my finger on
what was wrong. There I was with the sun on my face, and it suddenly struck me that I was
at Boundary Park, and I was warm.
The weather was somehow appropriate, for this game had a
pre-season feel to it. It wasn't exactly played with the ferocity you'd expect for a
relegation dogfight. When people applauded at half time, I couldn't for the life of me
work out why they were cheering this load of crap.
Thankfully, we started the second half like we meant
business. The fits the pattern this season of improving after half time. While this is
better than not improving at all, it is of course quite frustrating.
For a while we had a go at them. It resulted in Payton's goal
shortly after the break, although, as against Colchester, the man's personal determination
and skill clinched it. He got the ball in front of him from a Mellon pass, took it nearer
with a couple of touches, and flicked it over the goalkeeper. He was never going to miss.
It was yet another great moment from a great player.
Ten years after Hillsborough got rid of the fences, some of
our supporters chose to celebrate by running onto the pitch.
Oldham clearly didn't know their own names, or what the day
of the week it was, or anything much after that. For a while it looked like they'd
crumble. While we put them under pressure, we couldn't quite finish our attacks. Cooke and
Davis, who was joining the attack at every opportunity, were perhaps unlucky not to get
something. At this stage, a bold and imaginative manager would have capitalised on their
disarray by bringing on another attacking player and going for a win. Instead, we let the
momentum fade, and Ternent busied himself with making defensive substitutions.
While Cooke was undoubtedly knackered, he had made himself
tired chasing balls out wide all afternoon, in the absence of anyone else to do it, when
he should have been sitting in the middle awaiting supply. Now, finally, his substitution
brought the required width. Unfortunately Branch, having had one effective game, against
Colchester, is now seemingly due the five bad ones that follow. When he came on against
Colchester and played like a man possessed, he gave much of the credit to the iron tablets
the doctor had told him to pour down his throat. I was so impressed I went out and bought
some, figuring that if they could do that for him… Sadly, their effect seems to have
been short lived. He never got into this game.
Worst was to follow. Around ten minutes from the end, Payton
was taken off to howls of disbelief. We had settled for a point, had we? He didn't look
injured, but was later said to be suffering from a knock of the
won't-keep-him-out-of-the-next-game variety. That signalled the end of our attacking
ambitions. His replacement was the painfully slow Jepson, and although he tried as he
always will, in the ground where he scored against us last year, the game was merely
something that was going on around him. Here was a knock down man, a striker who doesn't
score goals but supports the other striker, playing up front, by himself.
Oldham could have snatched it at the end. Probably would have
done, but for Steve Davis, confirming this as his best game in a long time. Having
previously acted as the supplementary attacker, he now concentrated on clearing the ball.
Thanks to him it finished 1-1. It was still a peculiarly unsatisfactory result.
Results elsewhere went against us, as it happened. Pretty
much everyone else won. That made our failure to snatch the win that was there for the
taking even more frustrating. We can only hope we won't regret it. We could have done much
to lift ourselves out of trouble, and pushed our relegation rivals deeper into the mire at
the same time. We went for a draw, and we were stupid enough to get it.
Team: Crichton, Pickering, Cowan,
Mellon, Davis, Brass, Cooke (Branch 71), Armstrong, Cook, Payton (Jepson 78), Johnrose.
SNU: Reid.
The home game
