The View from 1882

Football is being Ruined…

Burnley 1-1 Colchester
Cole (23) Own Goal (38)

Ruined by the Premier League and its horrific greed and ruined by clueless officials another example of which we saw in our latest game against Colchester.

Once again we saw the referee and his fellow officials deny us points with a pathetic performance, not that our own performance was much better. We didn’t deserve to win the game, but in my opinion with a decent referee I think we would have done.

We had linesmen flagging giving the most bizarre offsides against us then letting Colchester attack with offside players.

This was most noticeable from the linesman in front of the Bob Lord Stand quite what game he was watching is anyone’s guess.

In contrast to a lot of poor referees Steve Bratt booked no-one, in fact after some of the absurd challenges from Colchester it left you wondering what it would take for him to brandish the yellow card perhaps producing a shotgun and shooting someone?
He also engineered their equaliser after a series of poor decisions led to him giving them a free kick just outside the area which took a cruel deflection thus beating Brian Jensen.His final mistake was to deny us a penalty.

He started off okay. I thought he had gone off and the referees had been changed part way through the first half when he walked over towards the dugouts because the referee that re-entered the field of play was a man transformed in a very bad way.

Nevertheless results elsewhere didn’t go that bad for us and we got closer to the top 6 with 6th placed Ipswich only being 1 point above us now. They do however have a 7 goal superior goal difference.

Andy Cole replaced Ade Akinbiyi in the starting 11 with Kyle Lafferty being picked to take McCann’s place. Elliott had a great chance to open the scoring after 16 minutes, but his shot was caught by Gerken in the Colchester goal. He should perhaps have done better with his shot.

On 21 minutes we nearly went behind when Kevin McLeod crossed to Clive Platt in the box. Platt should have scored, but his weak effort rolled on to the front of the post and came out rather than hitting the inside and going in as he intended. If he had put his laces straight through it there is little doubt he’d have scored.

We were playing poorly, but we managed to take the lead in the 23rd minute when a mistake from Colchester saw the ball passed to Andy Cole in front of goal. He smashed the ball past Gerken to give us the lead.

For the rest of the half we did precious little and instead Steve Bratt and his merry men took centre stage. Free kicks given against us for nothing, Colchester doing absurd fouls and getting no yellow cards, we getting flagged offside when there are men hanging onto our men in front of them.

Typically one of these ‘nothing free kicks’ ended up in the back of our net. A free kick from just outside the area by Jackson took a fluky deflection and beat Jensen.

About a minute later we nearly responded with a free kick goal of our own. An excellent effort from Blake cracked against the post and went out for a throw-in.

At half time the scores were level. We had been cheated out of the lead, but based on the performance we deserved at best to be level and you could argue Colchester deserved to be ahead.

The first chance of the second half fell to Kyle Lafferty who poorly shot straight at Gerken. Following this Joey Gudjonsson was replaced by Steven Caldwell and Robbie Blake was replaced by Ade Akinbiyi.

Lafferty missed a sitter which really only needed a decent connection to be a goal. Lafferty failed to connect with the ball at all and Cole nearly broke through on goal later on, but just failed to control a difficult ball.

Apart from that there was very little else of note in the second half until injury time when Ade Akinbiyi was having his shirt tugged in the box a clear penalty, but you would never have expected a penalty to be awarded with the decisions already made during the afternoon and duly no penalty was awarded.

So once again a game ends with controversy over the referee which is no great surprise at a Burnley match nowadays.

On a side note about the game in general one post I saw on a Manchester United forum summed recent events up perfectly I’ve included it with a link for all to see.

‘How long before they start staging drama and arguments between managers before the game just like WWF.
Gray: ‘Who’s this coming out of the tunnel? Its Ronaldo!!!!!’
Tyler: ‘I thought he was killed in that fire bomb at his home last super Sunday’
Gray: ‘We all did, he’s back and he wants revenge”
By Cantona’s Collar
From: http://www.forums.redissue.co.uk/showthread.php?t=116096

Man of the Match: Andy Cole
No-one stood out in what was a poor all round display, but Andy Cole scored and none of the others did (in the right end) so if anyone gets the award it should be him.

EET

Many thanks to EET for providing his match report and dont forget anybody else can provide match previews or reviews by contacting the Vital Burnley site or stating your interest in our forums