This was a woeful performance and a dire match, with Coventry equally a poor side just about deserving their 1-0 win. Full details will be provided in our usual official Match Report but it is hard to find anything positive to say about this performance.
The match was that bad my highlight of the day was the Prawn Curry & Rice I had in the JK English Pub and I spent most of the game being bored to tears playing quizes with my mate and trying to spot fellow Clarets that I knew in the crowd !
We seem to have simply lost the plot and are now totally incapable of entertaining our fans.
I was asked by my mate who we would choose to be our Man of the Match. I dont think we could come up with anybody that deserved it.
I am sorry Gifton but I am now going to award it to you for being able to stand up for the whole of the time you spent on the pitch after coming on from the bench.
Steve Cotterill continues to try and get the best out of Gifton Noel-Williams and the man always seems to feature at some point in the games. He is however the butt of most Clarets fans jokes and continually fails to show any promise or score goals. Does Steve know something we dont?
The one piece of positive news was that we saw Kyle Lafferty come on in the second half and although he didnt have a particularly good game, its always nice to know we are blooding these young guns for the future in a season which lets face it,is now over!
Having said that however we still need about 10 points for safety and when you look at the games coming up and our current awful form, you do wonder where those points will be coming from and we still have to play Sheffield Wednesday the 4th bottom placed club at Hillsborough and they are only nine points behind us.
Our only hope is that the bottom three clubs Millwall, Brighton and Crewe who are clearly off the pace, continue to be so!
I am half-tempted to want the Club to be in a relegation battle rather than have to suffer this midtable mediocrity we are seeing at the moment. At least then there might be more fight and passion involved
The Ricoh Arena flattered to deceive in my opinion. It looks awesome from outside but inside looked smaller than I had imagined and there seemed to be far too much concrete around. The atmosphere in the Burnley end was poor and everybody seemed subdued. This could be the effect of the sterile ground syndrome, the woeful performance by the Clarets or the bitter cold wind whipping up your trouser legs!
I was cheered in the first half by the shouts from Rocky as usual who was in the row in front of me but even he seemed to disappear and go elsewhere in the second half. He was probably in the bar because thats where I wanted to be!
It comes to something when the only shot on goal you remember was in the last couple of minutes by of all people, Frank Sinclair!
What is to become of us? The positive in me looks forward to the fact that we will have money to spend on players in the Summer, we have a number of young guns progressing well and we dont have any contract renewals to worry about in close season [excepting Branch]
However we still have to secure the future services of Steve Cotterill and folk are even now beginning to question his abilities as a football tactician. My biggest criticism of Steve is that he does not seem to be able to use his substitutions to good effect and tends to bring them on too late in the game to change the course of events. Other players in the team seem to struggle too much at this level and I havent seen anything yet from Danny Karbassiyoon who had a good chance to try and impress yesterday after coming on from the bench.
If we finish midtable again and are not in the Top 10, we will not have acheived any progress over last season and we do have to question whether some of the players in the current squad are good enough at this level. Even bringing new players in might not be enough if a number of our current team continue to play like they did yesterday !
What situation will we face in Jan 07, will we have progressed to a good chance of making the play-offs? If we are looking good by Xmas, I am not sure I could take, for the third year running, seeing our best players being sold off thus effectively ensuring season over with nothing to look forward to!
On the basis of yesterdays perfomance, we have a lot to do and I am not convinced we will achieve any success in the next season or so without a radical rethink by the Club and a move to something that ensures we can at least keep our fans entertained for more than half a season!
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