To fly in the face of that received
wisdom with a goal of pure grace and style was the act of a genius. And make no mistake,
Glen Little is a genius. He can do things out of the ordinary. He can do things most
people can't. Of course genius, by its nature, is unpredictable. It’s inconsistent.
You can’t rely on genius. But also, you can’t legislate for it. All the tactics
in the world can’t predict, and so can’t plan for, an outrageous bolt from the
blue. That’s what makes it so valuable. It isn’t a week in week out commodity
– how could it be? – but when it catches fire it achieves things that would not
have happened otherwise.
So it was that in the 69th minute of a
bad-tempered, badly-refereed game, Andy Cooke’s intelligent knockdown fell at the
feet of Glen Little, stood most of a half pitch’s distance from the goal. He held off
one man, beat a second man, and veered into the box. The first and second man had got back
into position by now, so he beat them again. A third defender could get nowhere near him.
As all three of them floundered, Little waited for the goalkeeper to panic before deftly
chipping the ball in over him and into the net. And it’s bloody hard to describe this
sort of thing without switching to clichés. Mazy dribble, jinking run, ball glued to his
foot? All of that. His path to goal was extravagant, full of tickles and touches of the
ball with both feet, employing his almost supernatural balance. The finish was cool,
poised, precise. After beating everyone there was to beat, Little calmly placed the ball,
and we non-calmly went wild. After the game, people said that Glen Little only did one
thing in the match. Yeah, he won the game. That was the one thing he did. He turned one
point into three through the alchemy of his genius. If you’re only going to do one
thing, try to do it as well as he did.
This isn’t to denigrate a superb team performance,
in which just about everyone played their part in the wake of Payton’s unfortunate
expulsion. All rallied round and worked hard to try to fill the considerable loss of
Payton. Through a combination of graft, persistence and resistance, they turned a probable
Bristol win into a likely 0-0 draw. But it was going to take a goal like Little’s to
give us an eighth straight win at Turf Moor. It was going to take a flash of brilliance to
break the deadlock in our favour. That’s why you have to have players like Little
around. Because sometimes, not always, games aren’t won by sound tactics, good
organisation and discipline. Often they are of course, and those qualities are necessary
and laudable – who wants to see bad tactics, poor organisation and indiscipline? But
sometimes, it takes something that comes from nowhere to grab the points. And, with the
deadliest finisher in this division sent from the pitch, not only was it the time for all
good men and true to come to the aid of the party – which they did, the team
responding magnificently – but it was the time for someone to stand up and make a
difference. The team’s performance got us into the position where an individual could
do something brilliant to snatch a goal, then the team’s performance ensured that
goal would mean a win.
I've grown tired of all this criticism of Glen Little.
People say that he can't fit the system, so we should sell him. I say a system which
cannot accommodate our best player is not a good system. Burnley's modern greats are given
a tough time. I'm as aware of the need to celebrate the triumphs of the past as anyone,
but sometimes it seems that going on about the tremendous players of old is almost a way
of denying this generation its own legitimate heroes. We know that there are players in
the past to whom none of the players of today can compare, but for those of us who have
never seen them, give us the right to get excited about players now. And, whatever you
want to tell me of great goals if yesteryear, Little's was the best I have ever seen at
Turf Moor. I remain sceptical that many better can have been scored there ever.
Naturally, it looked less promising when Payton was
sent off. That was something else that came from nowhere. One minute we were waiting in
some hope for a free kick to be played into the box. The next minute, the referee was in
deep consultation with a linesman. I hadn’t seen it. No one seemed to have seen it.
The referee clearly hadn’t seen it. Talking afterwards to one or two people who
claimed to have seen it, it seems that Payton headbutted a Bristol Rovers defender. So
yes, he had to go. As did the player who headbutted him. Payton’s attack had been
retaliatory. If a red card was appropriate for him, why not the other fellow? Consider
also that no player fell to the ground, no physio came on the pitch and no treatment was
needed. Suddenly sounds less violent, right? It had looked to us like the usual sort of
jostling that goes on in the penalty area. Bear in mind also that the referee consulted
his linesman for a couple of minutes, went back to the players, stopped, went back to his
linesman and talked for a couple more minutes before producing the straight red card. The
referee did not know what had happened. He appeared to be uncertain about the advice of an
official stood much further away than himself. If he was so unsure about what had
happened, how could he take such decisive action?
People will be quick to criticise Andy Payton. He
shouldn’t have retaliated. Of course he shouldn’t. But Payton is as human as you
or I. In a split section of reaction, what would you do? His response was the wrong one.
He should have thought to collapse clutching his head, then Bristol Rovers would have had
a man off. Perhaps he’ll know to do that next time. In responding to the presumably
deliberate wind up actions of fairly dirty team, he was wrong, but forgivable.
The shame of this was that we had started the brighter
team. We had looked more than capable of taking the game to the table-topping side. Cox,
signed in a real coup the day before, started as one of three central defenders. This
wasn’t a sweeper system; it was three central defenders all mucking in and sorting
things out between them. And it worked. Thomas was his usual colossal and ubiquitous self.
Cox was fine. I tried to keep half an eye on him throughout, and I liked what I saw. He
didn’t obviously look like someone who had joined the day before. While steady rather
than spectacular, he looked quick, composed and more than capable of passing the ball.
Three or four times he played smart balls at angles I hadn’t spotted. He seemed to
have a positive effect on Davis, too. Davis has looked horribly out of sorts of late, a
shadow of the classy player we signed last season. But he played here like there was hope
he might be on the way back up. Solid is the usual description applied to performances
such as these. He didn’t give things away and didn’t make mistakes, and after
the last few games, that was good. He also had our best chance to score apart from Glen
Little's wonder goal, with a first half snap shot from some distance, hitting the bar and
bouncing clear. There was a reminder of the Davis of old.
Odd, because I always thought Davis didn’t like
playing with three at the back. Perhaps it just depends on who the others are.
And this was a genuine three at the back. It started as
kind of four. Armstrong was definitely playing left back, but Little on the other side was
nothing but a right winger. We got more attacking when Armstrong was tactically
substituted. Admittedly his replacement was only Branch, but it seemed that Ternent had
spotted the lack of a threat down their right and had decided to seize the initiative.
With Branch on, we were playing three at the back, five in midfield, two of them wingers
and two strikers up front. We don’t get more attacking than this. And then the
sending off of Payton happened.
Of course, we went on to win, so all is well. Except
that Payton, top scorer of the division and the source of an extraordinary proportion of
Burnley’s goals, will not just have missed the rest of his game. His sending off on
the grounds of violent conduct will bring about his absence from three crucial games of
this season – the home matches against the other top three teams, Preston and Wigan,
and a trip to Colchester that we really must win. I tried to tell our friends the London
Gas in the pub afterwards that, regardless of the score, they had gained more from this
game than us. Because Payton’s absence is a huge one. We have no one at the club
capable of filling his shoes. Indeed, Cooke is our only other fit first team striker. All
other options are just people out of position. Cooke, up front mostly by himself, toiled
magnificently. No one worked harder, and he stayed on his feet and took whatever stick
they gave him, but he cannot play there by himself. The only times it looked like we might
do something where when Mullin moved forward. If we cannot sign a striker on loan to fill
in for Payton then Mullin must play there. He at least had one mad run down the touchline
that showed promise.
Everyone worked so hard. The Gasheads told us
afterwards that it was always harder to play against ten men, of course. Well, not ten
Burnley men, not usually. Clarets sides in the past have responded to a dismissal with the
raising of the white flag and rapid capitulation. After seizing on the piece of luck at
Stoke, where we turned a consolation goal into a comeback, and our sturdy response here,
perhaps there’s hope that this team will have the balls for the run in.
Our hard work having built the platform for
Little’s sublime moment, we thereafter set about defending. Little was almost
immediately replaced to a worthy ovation by Mellon. Mellon’s job was presumably to
calm things down. He promptly gave the ball away twice. Johnrose did his usual
semi-effective headless chicken routine. If you run around like a mad thing enough, you
will occasionally win the ball. Cook, thankfully not wearing his gloves of lightweightdom,
was nevertheless puzzlingly uninvolved. After his fine early season form, does he think
he’s done enough? Thankfully, defenders were up to the task, and Jeppo came on late
to do his usual rallying the troupes and getting in the opposition’s way bit. And at
last, Bristol began to attack. If I was a Gashead, I would ask questions about why such an
allegedly great attacking and top of the table side waited until ten minutes from the end
against ten men to try to score a goal. Up until then, they had seemed more interested in
disrupting our game through a series of sneaky and unpunished fouls. They are an
unfortunately cynical side, adopting pretty much every trick at their disposal. Playing
that way, and with referees as inept as the one here and the joker from the away game,
it’s easy to see how they are top. Although it has to be said, this gave us the
chance to see some good battles. Johnrose extracted revenge on Payton’s behalf, and
Thomas’ duel with Roberts was worth the fifteen quid on its own. Apparently this was
part two of a feud begun at the Memorial Ground. Thomas came out on top, succeeding in
keeping his man fairly quiet. This was done mostly legally, although as someone else said,
Thomas is never late, unless he wants to be, and he was late on Roberts. Of course,
Roberts can give it as well as take it, a key member of a side big in physique and full of
muscles. (One incident provided the day’s comedy moment. Roberts was, in the opinion
of one supporter, "a black bastard." I politely enquired how this worked for the
three black bastards who were playing for us. He mumbled something along the lines of
political correctness having gone mad, but went elsewhere at half time. 1-0.)
Bristol Rovers’ attacks in the last ten minutes
produced another hero of he day. According to the proper reports in posh newspapers, they
had eight corners in the last ten minutes. They also put in a number of fierce long range
shots. They battered our goal. Crichton was equal to it. He caught, punched or pushed away
whatever came over. Thomas was always there too. If there was a tackle to be made in the
box, he wouldn't shirk it. The numbers board held up a zero - didn't realise they went so
low - but even then, the end seemed to take an agonising time coming. Ternent celebrated
by shaking the hand of every single Burnley player as they left the pitch. It had been
that sort of game.
And what a game: a red card, violence, excitement,
genius, drama and a nervous ending. What more can you ask from any sport? Oh yes,
promotion would be nice. It's not over yet.
