Welcome to issue 129 of the magazine.
Well, things just go from bad to worse,
don’t they? Two appalling home defeats, a devastating injury crisis exacerbated by a
terrible disciplinary record and what can only be described as a headlong rush towards
relegation to look forward to.
So what’s changed since the Waddle
relegation wagon rolled out of town. I personally believe that there is a distinct
difference between the Waddle season and the Ternent version. Waddle spent a great deal of
money on at best mediocre players, totally destroying the sound foundations that Heath had
laid, wrecking morale and quite simply being out of his depth, with a huge ego to boot.
Ternent has spent much on mostly talented players, players with good track records and
talent. Sadly for Ternent and the supporters, the majority of these have been
disappointing, and the general lack of confidence that abounds at Turf Moor has weighed
heavily on their shoulders. Ternent himself has said that Turf Moor is one of the hardest
grounds to perform at (as a home player) and this is probably true. The weight of
expectation at Turf Moor is almost suffocation as a supporter, so it must be worse as a
player. That being said, these people are well paid professionals, this is their job, and
they should be able to cope with crowd expectation. How many times have you heard players
say that once the game starts they don’t hear the crowd? If this is true how come
they seem to suffer from the reaction of the crowd? The old adage of ‘get behind
them’ is nonsense. It doesn’t make a blind bit of difference. Remember Nogan
spouting off after the Preston defeat, saying the crowd reaction made him play better?
Absolute tosh. Nogan played poorly. He didn’t have a sniff. He got lucky with a
speculative shot. That goal had absolutely nothing to do with crowd reaction. The same
goes at the other end: ‘getting behind them’ has never produced a goal for
Burnley. If a goal is scored during a particularly raucous chant, that is not the reason
that the opposing keeper failed to stop the ball from going in.
Yes we would all prefer to be at a game where
the supporters are all friends and the singing and chanting all positive, but that is a
dreamworld far away from reality. It can become irritating when you get an individual
shouting ‘get behind them, don’t have a go at them’ after the team have
just conceded yet another sloppy goal. Human nature dictates that you are not going to be
overly impressed. Football is still allegedly in the business of entertaining people. Yes,
we’ve heard it said before, but you don’t pay good money to go to the theatre,
watch a terrible performance and get up to leave only to be told ‘get behind
them’. That just wouldn’t wash. People have a right to criticise when they are
not getting value for money. That is the domain of the football supporter more than any
other. Players have a responsibility to be professional and earn their corn as any worker
does. How many of us would be out of a job if we have the equivalent of a 5-0 and 6-0 home
defeat in our working lives? I firmly believe that Ternent has been let down by his
signings and by players who were already at the club.
That is not to say that the manager is totally
blameless in all this. Some of his tactics have been bewildering. He insisted on playing
the ineffective Morgan week in week out, then finally dropped him after probably his best
run of form all season. Not much I know, but why wasn’t he dropped before? Neil
Moore, need I say more? Absolutely useless, but again his name has regularly appeared on
the teamsheet unless he has been mercifully injured. There have been disasters in his
choice of formation too. Was that really six at the back at Fulham? Ternent talks a good
game, he reassures supporters after the match with his insistence that he too is a Burnley
supporter and defeats hurt his just as much as they do us. Whilst this is undoubtedly
true, Ternent must understand that supporters at this club are sick and tired of poor
results, and more than this they are fed up of watching dross. We’ve had this for
yeas, but one thing that we thought we could count on this season was team spirit and a
little bit of pride. Sadly the only thing we have seen, apart from a couple of notable
exceptions are games where we have capitulated, where we have failed to defend in the past
ten minutes, where our players have seem a constant stream of yellow and red cards in
front of their eyes. Discipline has been appalling. Yes, not all the cards have been
deserved but many have. This lies firmly at the manager’s fee. He has a training
ground and he has a need to implement a system where players are loathe to be shown a card
for fear of financial penalty. At the moment it looks like we’re paying far too much.
I am fully behind Stan Ternent, I still believe
he is the man for the job, the best manager in the lower divisions. I just hope he can
prove me right. And, in the words of that irritating bloke behind you, ‘get behind
him’.
