The Longside Reference

Steve Cotterill had just endured his worst season as Burnley manager the season previous, the 19 game winless run, sticking in many a Burnley fans mind. This would be his last season as manager of Burnley, only 16 League Games in and he left by 'mutual consent', so mutual that he came to his own 'Sacking'.

 Steve Cotterill, who will still go down as a legend in Burnley's recent history, he built a team from nothing, brought premiership players in and gave Burnley fans some great times. But towards the end those good times became a distant memory, The victory over West Brom on the opening day of this season was the highlight, but with only 4 more victories in the next 15 games it would be his undoing, on a Tuesday night home game against a lacklustre Hull City ( who went up into the Premiership through the play-offs), it was the straw that broke the camels back, or so to speak.

Burnley were left in 15th place, on the 6th of November after the Hull defeat, Cotterill  who had signed Steven Jordan, Gabor Kiraly, David Unsworth had all been signed by Cotterill on frees whilst Clarke Carlisle was a £200k replacement for the out going Wayne Thomas, who signed for Southampton in a £1.2mil deal, the only other signing for Burnley would be Besart Berisha, the Albanian front man who terrorised England's B team whilst on international duty at Turf Moor, he signed for £350k from Bundesliga side Hamburg SV , but unfortunately we didn't see any of the Striker for two reasons, Cotterill didn't pick him, and in November injury struck him down whilst on International duty. Steve Cotterill also brought back Robbie Blake for £250k from Leeds United a cool million less than what we sold the striker for.

His signings didn't have the impact Burnley needed to push on, Gabor was prone to the odd clanger, as was Steven Jordan whilst Unsworth for all his knowledge was a little too slow in the back line for this division, only Clarke Carlisle looked like a bargain. So at a meeting with Brendon Flood after the Hull City debacle, they decided the best thing for Burnley Football club would be for them to part company, and as a consequence Steve Cotterill's reign at Burnley would be at an end.

With Steve Cotterill now gone, and with his former assistant Dave Kevan leaving a month before, it was left to his first team coach to step into the void, enter Steve Davis former Captain who had played for the Clarets on three different occasions and was a Wembley Winner in the famous Claret'n'Blue. Leicester City would be the opponents,(ironically the team where Burnley found Steve Cotterill),installed as caretaker manager Steve Davis won his one and only game 1-0  with Andy Gray getting the goal.

(The 125 year commemorative Brochure given out at the end of the season to season ticket holders, and is available to buy from the club shop)

On the manager's front, the bookies had a headache on a daily basis with leaks about who would be the next Burnley boss, Mike Newel was an early definite, Paul Jewel too had the Bookies stopping to take bets, but the leak we all believed was that Peter Reid had signed a contract that would take him back into management. But when Owen Coyle's name was finally released we were all looking back to his Bolton days, a centre forward who hated to lose.

Owen Coyle was installed as Burnley manager before the Stoke City game on November 24th 2007, and a promise of attractive attacking football came with his first addresses, he started with a well earned draw against Stoke, then he took his new attack minded Clarets on the road with immediate success, beating Charlton and Watford away, a TV date with sleeping giant Wolves showed the world he meant Business, not only beating them, but playing a sort of football Burnley fans have been dreaming of for decades.

Arsenal would be a glorious chance for Coyle to show all and sundry that he was going to make Burnley a force, a 2-0 defeat was no embarrassment, in fact Arsene Wenger praised Burnley for the way they played the game, even loaning youth team starlet Mark Randell to the clarets for the rest of the season.

With January upon us and the Transfer market open, Newspapers were gossiping and money was being mentioned, the sale of top scorer Andy Gray, who showed no respect to the management, the directors, but most of all the supporters of Burnley Football Club by orchestrating his move to Charlton, Stanislav Varga came in on loan from Sunderland, with Andrew Cole who was a magnificent capture by Burnley's new boss.

With the January transfer market shut, and with Coyle's reluctance to pay over the odds for players, Burnley's season petered out, 7th place in the table is were Burnley stood when Cole and Randell made their way to the Hawthorns to face a West Brom team who were beating any team put in front of them, and Cole and co were too put to the sword beaten 3-0, with that Burnley's beleaguered squad dropped down the league in 13th place. so near but...ah you know how it goes.

Owen Coyle ended his first half season, with a home game against FA Cup finalists Cardiff City, this game will go down as legend, Burnley drawing the game 3-3 with a horrible over the top tackle from Darren Purse on Andrew Cole leaving the former England International incensed, Purse rightly so, was shown the red card (Over turned by the Welsh FA), off went Purse down the tunnel, with an enraged Cole looking for a show down with the 6 ft 2ins, dirty, Cardiff centre half, players and coaches from both sides ran up the tunnel to calm this highly volatile situation, Riotous laughter sounded around the Turf, like watching a scene from Benny Hill, and that's the last we saw of Andrew Cole, who would be remembered more for his exit, than his superior class on the pitch.

The last game away to Crystal Palace was poor, Clark Carlisle saw red (but the English FA, well..spineless bunch), and with Coyle using the already dead game as a fitness task throwing on youngster MacDonald, and a run out for the returning to fitness Michael Duff.

So the season which started with a bang, resulted with us getting rid of BYMOTP, allowing a legend to take charge of a game, then the hiring of the "New Shankly" aka Coyle, impressing Arsenal, watching Cole chase Purse, then finally after all this it ended with a 5-0 stuffing.