Match Details

Cook

Reports

The Stadium itself is well appointed with the usual combination of bleached concrete and plastic. However compared to the Madejewski Stadium, the playing surface was of Billiard table quality, and one yearned to be putting on one's own boots on, the rattle of studs and for the smell of embrocation.

Naturally a huge contingent of Burnley supporters were present for this vital clash, which included approx. 1000 ticketless Gatescrashers, who the Local Constabulary obviously felt would be better contained in the Ground than in Toys R Us or Carpetright.

The Clarets kicked off unchanged from their dismal display on Wednesday night and my pre-match prediction was for a 2 - 0 Wigan win based on the evidence I had seen before me. Therefore we had

Crichton, West Davis Thomas Armstrong Mellon Cook Mullin Little Payton Cooke

Subs Branch (60 mins for Armstrong) Lee (75 minsish for Cooke) SNU Jeppo Brass & Johnrose

BTW a good summary of the play can be found on the Wigan site http://www.wiganlatics.co.uk/reports/reports9900/burnleyh.html

To my surprise, amazement, & joy, with a boisterous crowd behind them but kicking away to the far end, the Clarets started in a determined fashion and began an encampment in the Wigan half of the field. Mullin, Cook and Mellon bossed the middle and quickly established a beach-head outside the Wigan box. Little at this stage was seeing plenty of the ball and was well supported in attack. One early setback was a booking for the somewhat over eager Cook, playing against one of his former clubs. However after a few corners and much Burnley pressure the goal arose. A cross from Little was tossed in a few heads went up, a nudge forward and the ball was in the net, Payton with arms aloft was the scorer.

Undoubtedly Wigan had started nervously and tentatively, were hurried in their clearances, and couldn't string any coherent moves together. Burnley were well on top and instead of reacting to the goal, Wigan looked stunned to be behind. This created more pressure to the extent that Wigan rarely broke out of their own half and quickly surrendered possession to the Clarets rock solid defence or tigerish midfield whenever they did. Indeed Wigan were restricted to one tame effort from Barlow and Crichton could have joined us in the seats for the most part. I reckon this might have been due to their players not being used to the Big Match atmosphere, and being taken by surprise by the Clarets attacking intentions.

It was an amazingly one-sided contest, until Wigan revealed why they are top of the table. After their first dangerous probe down their right they gained a throw in. From the throw a cross was whipped in from the corner, and appeared to be flicked on to the closely policed Haworth, standing just beyond the centre spot with his back to goal and Davis "right up his arse", metaphorically speaking of course. The big man deftly controlled the ball, put it in the perfect spot to strike, swivelled and arrowed the ball into the bottom left corner all in one fluid two second movement, leaving Davis wrong-footed and rooted and Crichton well beaten. A well taken goal out of nothing, with perhaps the Clarets defence caught a tad cold due to their previous domination of the Wigan attackers, however it was a quality strike, but gut wrenching all the same.

Half time came shortly after and Burnley trudged off, after dominating every aspect of play, all square. A cruel lesson that, when all said and done, the only thing that really counts in football is scoring and preventing goals. I feared that having been so totally in control and Wigan playing so poorly we may catch a backlash in the second half and a few heads might go down. However what we saw in the second half was what you might call a normal game, with the home side on top but with the Clarets attempting to break out whenever possible. Clearly both sides felt they could win the game, but without throwing caution to the wind. Fortunately they were kicking towards the other end so it was difficult to see how close they came to scoring, but on occasions they looked mighty close. Wigan started to push up on the Clarets full backs more and Liddell in particular found joy down the Clarets left, cutting inside and exposing the lack of pace of Armstrong and Thomas/Davis.

Stan remedied this by taking off Armstrong and replacing him with the rejuvenated and re-galvanised Branch. He was given the difficult job of containing Wigan's star man down the side of the pitch with their supporters amassed behind and to the left of him. It was an excellent contest with Branch standing up up to the threat more successfully than one could imagine. Clearly the lad isn't a forward but we might have found yet another left back here. Keegan should be alerted.

The game continued to be end to end stuff right until injury time with the Clarets pressing forward for the winner. Payton narrowly failed to connect with a Little cross which took out the Wigan defence and goalie, and right at the death Alan Lee spurned the Clarets easiest chance when he opted for placement rather than power from an inch perfect Payton cross to the near post. The lad had a chance to become a hero, but unfortunately blew it, but on the positive side he got in a good position and got it on target forcing the keeper to make an excellent save. Whilst I felt Cooke had a typically robust game, Lee's extra height created one or two flick ons and he was unfortunate that Carroll made such a good save from his last minute effort.

So to summarise it was a cracking game, a thundering derby but with some excellent attacking football played by both sides. It was nice to see both sides trying to win a game by way of contrast to the game at Reading. In the event I suppose we could be happy with a point, but as Benson has suggested, the Clarets inability to turn domination into goals let Wigan off the hook, when they should have been reeled in, de-gorged, weighed, had their innards taken out, filleted & in the frying pan by half time.

As for Wigan they looked very good going forward and one only has to look at their goal tally, (50% more than Burnley ) to realise that they are going to knock a lot of sides out at home before they know what's hit them. The front pair look very sharp, although Barlow squandered some good chances yesterday. They look shakey at the back at times, but with their ability to score goals left right and centre, and from nothing at all as against the Clarets, Burnley's magnificent unbeaten record run of 30 games undefeated looks under threat. For my money Wigan are certs for one of the top two slots, they have the offensive capability to murder teams at home and a reasonably good defence. They have bags of money and have signed another forward in Peron to perhaps replace Barlow, currently in a contractual dispute. At the age of 31, he is looking for a three year renewal. Cheeky eh?

Right up there with them are Preston and Gillingham, two sides with good offensive capability home and away. It looks to me as if these three will dispute the top two places. Burnley I feel are a good side but lack that vital cutting edge up front that could have reaped six points from the last two games and not the two they ended up with. Furthermore, the financial situation is not good, 3 million in debt and losing money every week, effectively means that unless they produce a sparkling Cup run they will have to sell before they can seriously strengthen. The side is still heavily reliant on Cooke, Payton and Crichton staying injury free, as we have seen after the recent barren runs whatever the merits of either player that there are no effective alternatives.

There are a lot of other sides milling about, and realistically in the one to one confrontations they are going to have to knock some or all of these over to remain in contention. As Richard Dinnis suggested afterwards there are a lot of good footballing sides, and despite the lack of a decent side coming down from Division One, there is plenty of competition there for the Clarets to contend with.

Unusually all three play-off losers are very much in contention, normally one or two of them fade away into oblivion. However there is still a long way to go and I believe that the Clarets main asset is the strength in depth of the squad giving Ternent the opportunity to change things around when they hit a sticky patch as they did a few weeks back. The Clarets have got progressively better as the weeks have gone on, and if nothing else they showed they have the determination and the ability to take on the best sides in the Division in their own domain. What they lack at times is that vital cutting edge in the box.

However twenty seven games to go and still in the leading pack.

Up the Clarets

Igor

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