Is there any point wasting time in searching
for the right word? Will crap cover it? Does dismal do? Or how about abysmal? All these
would suffice for a one word report, but in the pub after this shoddy affair we took a few
choice adjectives, rolled them around our mouths and savoured them. Abject was what we
came up with, in the end. Abject. That’s how it was. But, you know, I wouldn’t
want to spend too much time seeking the killer description. It’s not as though
it’s worth putting any effort into writing about the game, at least, not any more
than the team put into playing it. They didn’t bloody bother, so why should we?
This was a performance straight out of the
waddle dark ages. In fact, it was worse than that: of the four defeats under four managers
in this hell hole, waddle’s was the only one that was less than humiliating.
Successive managers have come here to get thrashed. This therefore dangles before us the
enticing excuse that this might be simply an unlucky ground where we will always get
nothing, in which case, what is the point in getting exercised about it? But the point is
that we could have turned up at the luckiest Clarets ground in Christendom, played like
this and got beat.
Similarly, that most tired of Mullenesque
responses to failure, blaming the referee, shouldn’t be allowed houseroom here. The
referee was bad. The referee was Brian Coddington of Sheffield, lately of Darlington.
Those two sentences basically say the same thing. Johnrose’s sending off for a
bookable tackle was indeed a little harsh, if not as much as we may have pretended at the
time. The overreaction of the Wycombe bench which helped to persuade the referee was
pretty despicable, as was the ease with which the referee allowed himself to be persuaded.
As for Pickering’s sending off for a second booking, I cannot comment. It eluded me,
as by that stage of the game I had got bored, and my mind was wandering, along with my
body, which was outside the ground. In between the two red cards, most decisions went the
way of the home side. Think this Coddington’s a bit of a homer? Perhaps.
But there were many things he couldn’t be
blamed for, and I maintain that we would have lost this game even with a good referee and
a full complement of players.
I use the term full complement loosely,
because we never have less than two passengers in the team, often more. There were so many
passengers in this game you couldn’t really see how they were going to get anywhere.
Of course, the team was disrupted by injuries and suspensions, as football teams have a
habit of being. We had two players out, sure, but one of them was Neil Moore, which can
only ever be a good thing. And anyway, suspensions are hardly acts of god. Ternent seemed
to think it unfair that Mellon’s Tranmere booking counted against him now and left
him absent from this game, as if this hasn’t always applied to everybody ever, as if
each player is made afresh whenever he leaves one club for another. And of course, if
players aren't actually suspended when we sign them, surely they have a chance to try not
getting suspended at Burnley? When players get suspended, it’s because they get
booked, and most bookings are avoidable. The amount of yellow cards dished out for dissent
this season speaks of an unforgivable lack of professionalism. Cut them out, and
we’ll have more players to choose from.
We also had injuries. Little was out, but who
could honestly say that he had recovered from his operation in the first place? He might
have been fit to play in this match if he had not been rushed back prematurely before.
Robertson was missing too, but he is only ever a marginal influence. These changes meant
that Brass was recalled as part of the eternally unsuccessful three man central defence,
with Branch moved back into midfield alongside Armstrong and (for a while) Johnrose. At
least, as far as I can tell. It’s seldom easy working out where everyone is supposed
to be playing even when you’re at the match. It’s impossible to do it from the
Sunday papers the next day.
So, we could use injuries and suspensions as
our excuse. But this was Wycombe we were playing, for heaven’s sake. This was no-one
good: a bottom of the table side of no quality with nothing going for them save an ability
to battle. Which shouldn’t be enough. They will surely go down, and sides of any
quality - sides which have, say, recently spent around £1.5 million on players - should
expect a routine, if hard-fought win. This was a very bad game between two bad sides, but
Wycombe can make excuses. We can’t. We have spent more money than most, Fulham apart.
We are now one of the big spending clubs of the division. Some sides have spent nothing:
Macclesfield, Lincoln, Wycombe. Do you see a pattern emerging? Why isn’t it working?
Those are the excuses dealt with. There were
many things in this game for which we could not blame the ref, or absences, or the fact
that Adams Park appears to have been built on an Indian burial ground.
Chief among those who had no one to blame but
themselves was Crichton, whose apparent inability to ever catch or kick a ball is
beginning to grate. I accept that when we signed him we couldn’t afford anyone
better, but in the week when Gavin Ward joined Stoke on a free, we should have the guts to
say it’s not good enough to have a goalie who rarely keeps hold of the ball and when
he does cannot give it to one of our players. His indecision served to spread confusion
and nervousness among our defence.
Not that they needed much help. I have a
theory about Burnley supporters: regardless of age and on what level of football they were
weaned, they all want to see their team play in basically the same way: 4-4-2, with two
attacking wide players in midfield, running at the opposition and getting the ball
forward. If Burnley stand for anything, let it be that. Similarly, I believe all Clarets
have a horror of playing five at the back. If you don’t believe me, look at some of
our old magazines; manager after manager has been condemned for trying to play that way. I
also have a theory why us Clarets believe this: because five at the back does not work.
Attacking wide play does. And if the supporters are uncomfortable with three central
defenders, this is nothing compared to how the three central defenders feel. Any system
which is capable of making the normally unflappable Steve Davis look ill at ease clearly
isn’t working. British defenders - and that is what we have - are brought up on
playing four at the back. This is a cliché but it’s nevertheless true. It’s
what they do best. Over the years, any number of Burnley defenders have struggled to
adjust to this misplace tactical tinkering. Yet is seems that every Burnley manager, when
they run out of original ideas, must go through a foolish phase of dabbling in this. And I
maintain: when we have been successful, it has been with four at the back. When we have
failed, it has been with five.
Odd, because I thought I heard these notions
of the way Burnley should play being aired quite recently by Ternent. It’s a shame he
doesn’t seem to have meant it. Still, I suppose by now we’re well enough aware,
without this additional piece of evidence, of the widening gap between the great game our
manager talks and the lousy way we play.
Also unable to indulge in scapegoating was our
terrible captain, Gordon Armstrong. If Burnley have had a worse captain lately, his name
eludes me. This man is useless. He’s the antithesis of a captain: subdued, silent,
uninvolved. If we’re bad at the moment, Armstrong is leading by example. When the
team cries out for an on pitch leader, and with the conspicuous candidate of Steve Davis
trying to hold the team together, Stan’s man enjoys his patron’s seemingly
permanent protection, and a whole string of rotten games cannot dislodge him from the
team. Ternent calls him his ‘captain courageous.’ I’ll take a boxfull of
whatever hallucinogens he’s on, please. Perhaps there’s some distant parallel
universe in which our skipper shouts, cajoles, encourages, organises and ensures that
spirits never drop, and as a bonus, passes to Burnley players. If so, it’s a parallel
universe only Stan can see.
Similarly, only one person was to blame for
the frankly bizarre decision to substitute our centre forward when two goals behind while
down to ten men, and that person is not other than Mr Francis Stanley Ternent. It was a
crazy, crackpot and stupid decision. With Payton still clearly as unfit as ever, Cooke was
the man most likely to grab a goal. He was replaced by Peter Swan and, yes, while it was
unlucky that Swan was almost immediately carried off with a horrible injury, in these
circumstances, with the game lost, why not go for broke and play three up front? At least
the as ever substantial away following, who continue to turn up in unlikely numbers at
this godless hole, might have been entertained.
Rumours are always dangerous things to
believe, but what else do we ever have? So rumours of a (and these are the words that are
always used) ‘training ground bust up’ between Payton and Cooke may be untrue.
The club claimed Payton was dropped against Reading due to back pains, and certainly we
could choose to believe this, as we always could believe any story that associates Payton
with injury. But if the ‘training ground bust up’ stories are false, they are
certainly prevalent. Other tales have us offloading Payton in part exchange, while stories
from good sources hold that Ternent doesn’t rate Cooke and is keen to get rid at the
earliest. One thing seems clear: Ternent doesn’t get on with strikers. How else to
explain why he hasn’t signed one? We really should not be contemplating losing either
without bringing at least two new ones in. This is one area where the squad is painfully
thin.
Of course, by the time we lost Cooke the
damage had already been done. Two goals in around a minute finished us. As if we were ever
going to rise to the challenge after that. The first might have been bad luck. Vinnicombe,
who would not normally pass for a world beater, knew that to run at us would create panic.
Pickering succeeded in getting absolutely nowhere near him as he ran towards the box.
Pickering beaten, Payton proved comprehensively to us all that his strength lies in
attack. Vinnicombe stepped past him, played in a ball, it bounced off something, was
semi-cleared, but buried on the rebound.
If the first had been tinged with misfortune,
the second was nothing other than suicidal. A tame ball floated in saw our defenders
looking at each other and Crichton coming from his line to miss the cross. This left
Wycombe a free header from point blank range. Only we would miss one of those.
If a single person had taken responsibility
for clearing the ball, we would not have gone 2-0 now and might have had just a chance of
getting something. As it was, a collective failure of our defence cost us dear. Crichton
deserved most of the blame, for not communicating, not co-ordinating and, most
importantly, not catching. But he does that at least once every game.
We played out time. Branch, as ever, wasted
what slender opportunities came our way. Showing an alarmingly bad grasp of physics, he
always kicked the ball straight at the nearest defender. He has, at least, achieved a
measure of that elusive consistency. When Swan went off we were treated to the pointless
sight of Steve Davis playing up front while Cooke watched from the bench. In this,
Davis’ game before suspension, all our manager succeeded in proving is that
Davis’ best position really is defence, and he’s about as good a striker as
Payton is a defender. He’s not as good an attacker as Andy Cooke.
Can’t say what had happened at the end,
as by then I’d left to incur the exaggerated displeasure of a local shopkeeper. This
wasn’t a new and drastic improvement of the three goals rule. I was simply bored. We
went off in an attempt to have a good drink in Wycombe. I’m not sure we succeeded.
I should offer my apologies for what I know to
be a substandard as well as very late match report, but horribly early the morning after,
and with a hangover of quite frightening proportions, I had to leave on a work trip
overseas. Yeah, life’s hard. So the above was written in messy hand in a knackered
notebook in various planes and hotel rooms over the next ten days, and then typed weeks
later during a total collapse of our team. I only made myself do it so I could say
I’ve maintained my record of reporting on every match I’ve seen this season
(except, er, Dawlish, which I somehow never got round to). So, for the record, that's my
sloppy, slapdash kind of match report.
Well, those are my excuses. What are yours,
Stan?
