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APRIL 2009 PART ONE.
THE PERMUTATIONS ARE ENDLESS with just six games remaining. Three wins should see us in the top six at the end of the final day. Three games are at home. The two biggest games are Cardiff City away and Sheffield United at home. Preston in seventh place are four points behind. And we have a better goal difference thanks to the five we put past Nottingham Forest. Everything depends on who beats who up there in the top six. It is even still just possible that we can take second place and automatic promotion. Wolves now look uncatchable but Birmingham are suspect. Cardiff in March made little use of their games in hand and are currently far from convincing. The form teams are ourselves and Sheffield United.
HOW MANY CLUBS ARE VULNERABLE AND COULD FOLD?
There are genuine concerns that the current financial, recession and credit crunch problems will seriously affect those clubs where corporate sponsors and boxholders are facing cut backs in their businesses. Corporate money plays a huge part in any football club’s finances. Quite simply, there are clubs who may well find it difficult to persuade current corporate supporters to continue with that support. At Turf Moor the boxholders who currently reside in the James Hargreaves Stand are there because of money paid out before the recession began to bite. It is to be hoped that buyers for these boxes will continue to be found and club sponsors will continue to invest. No one knows just how many season ticket holders have lost jobs and will be unable to buy a new season ticket. The forecast is for the unemployment total is a rise to 3million. The club is in enough financial trouble without the added problem of having difficulty of losing season ticket holders and, or, finding corporate interest. The Daily Mirror identified Southampton, Charlton, Stockport, Cheltenham, Bournemouth, Darlington and Chester City as being in severe trouble.
A little later came the news that PNE are losing £183,000 a week. Someone cruelly suggested that this was the cost of the pies Parkin is eating every week.
The plus, however, is that Brian Mawhinney and his board have increased the sponsorship deals for the Carling Cup and the new BBC/BSkyB deal, which from next season will see around £2.9million for each club in the Championship.
DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE NEWCASTLE FAN who was fed up with Newcastle’s performances and the general state of the club teetering towards relegation?
Well Kevin Southerton aged 26 was so disgusted and irate when Sunderland scored against his beloved Newcastle that he ran onto the pitch yelling that he was utterly appalled and he wanted the club to ban him.
“I hope I get banned, I’m sick of watching this,” he yelled at all and sundry.
Well, of course he was dragged off the pitch by the plod and charged with disorderly conduct. The JP did not ban him though. The fan was merely fined £200. Clearly the JP thought that continuing to have to watch Newcastle would be an even worse punishment than a ban.
His legal representative said on his behalf that he was very upset at the dire performances of Newcastle United and though she knew little about football she understood that he wasn’t the only one feeling that way.
BURNLEY FC have got the legends plaque back that was stolen from the wall of the Jimmy Mac stand. It was recovered when someone tried to sell it to the Burnley Memorabilia shop in Standish Street. You couldn’t make it up could you?
NO FOOTBALL THIS WEEKEND and the England (only a Mickey Mouse friendly) game is on Setanta, the channel nobody wants and we all wish it would go broke. So we had chums to stay for the weekend… fellow Clarets – well at least he is but his Mrs has no interest at all. We took them down to see Clarence Dock in Leeds and the Armouries museum. It’s free entry to see some wonderful exhibits. It used to be something like £15 a pop but nobody went so they had to end admission charges. We’re not daft in Yorkshire tha knows...
It seemed very odd to be doing this and the Plymouth weekend seemed an age ago. My neighbour is fuming at the mess that Bradford are making of getting out of their division. They were in the top six for a long time but seem to have blown it. His opinion of manager McCall is the same as we had for Waddle.
Ade this weekend has the chance to fly off to Houston to discuss terms for signing up over there. We all wish him well I’m sure. I remember particularly his hat trick at Luton and his goal at Chelsea – never to be forgotten occasions. To say you were at Chelsea that special night and saw Ade score is a badge of honour.
I LIKED WHAT FRANK LAMPARD HAD TO SAY about young players (no longer called apprentices) and that they should have to clean older professionals’ boots and be responsible for some of the many menial tasks around a football club that they no longer have to do. I remember Willie Irvine (right) telling me that in his day the apprentices had to sh ovel out the latrines that were situated behind the Longside. In Dave Thomas’s era they were responsible for painting parts of the ground, washing and sorting dirty kit, and forking the pitch after every game… no joke in the pouring rain. Today, young players mix training and coaching with days at college. Lampard remembers the days that he and John Terry had to clean the senior players’ boots and if they weren’t done properly they were thrown back at them with a curt do ‘em again from people like hard man Julian Dicks. It kept our heads on our shoulders said Lampard and did us no harm. Today he bemoans the fact that 17 and 18 year olds have too much too soon, and many of them think they have ‘arrived’ before they have even played a first team game. Today he says there is a lack of rigorous progression through the levels that once faced a young apprentice… from the Junior Team, through the C, B, A and then reserve teams, each playing every week. In those early days the young lads knew their place and a cuff round the ear was not unknown.
 At Burnley, it is hard to imagine that our young lads have too much too soon. This is a club with barely a pot to piss in, as the saying goes. I also heard Terry Pashley at Bradford City’s training ground bawling at the youths played when they played Bradford. Terry is not a man you take lightly or take liberties with.
We have just given five of the youth team their first contracts. Five is a very good harvest. If they reach the level of Macdonald and McCann and Rodriguez the club can be well satisfied. I hesitate to mention Lafferty. He is not a young lad I would look at as a role model for any youth player.
JIMMY ADAMSON WAS 80 THIS WEEK. I spent the years from ’59 onwards watching him play until injury forced his retirement. He was elegant, cultured, and stylish. His long gangly legs ate up the ground with lolloping strides. Never the quickest of players, he forged a partnership with Jimmy Mac that lasted for many years and formed the hub of the talented team that won the title. There are some who would suggest that the title win was more to do with Adamson and McIlroy, than anything Harry Potts ever did. He was footballer of the year in 1962, and assistant manager to England’s Walter Winterbottom in ’62 when the team went to Chile for the World Cup finals. He was offered the job of manager when Winterbottom was replaced. He turned it down and the job went to Alf Ramsey.
He lives quietly in Burnley now and turned his back on football many years ago. A biography could be called ‘Broken Dreams’ and his career and life merits one. Today, almost a recluse, it is unlikely it will ever be written. After his dream team of the mid seventies was broken up by enforced sales and affected by injuries, and then a 1976 traumatic Cup defeat at Blackpool (managed then by the man he replaced at Burnley Harry Potts), he moved to Sunderland, then Leeds United and nothing was ever the same.
There are stories of drink and bitter rows with Lord including money issues. How he came to replace Harry Potts is not without its own set of stories and alleged behind the scenes manoeuvrings. He and Lord were both Masons, Harry was not.
Adamson and Potts were poles apart by the time Lord moved Harry ‘upstairs’, and Potts when Adamson became manager was almost an unwanted figure at the club with no real purpose. In short, Harry was yesterday’s man, and a new breed of play and coaching was moving into football.
 Everyone will say what a great coach Adamson was but that his man-management skills left a lot to be desired. There were players who had no time for him and others who still idolise him. There seems to be no in-between. His ‘team-of-the-seventies’ might have been just that if Dobson and then James had not been sold. Thomas and Kindon went first, the former a supremely skilled player who did not fit the Adamson mould. Adamson told Kindon he was going to build a team around him – and then he was sold. The maverick, free-spirited Brian O Neil was sold at the beginning of the season that Burnley went down.
Initially there were cries of ‘Adamson out’ especially after a defeat at Blackpool but that particular season ended with 6 wins as he fashioned his team of workers and flair players led by the power of Colin Waldron, the elegance of Dobson, the bravery of Paul Fletcher, the deadliness of Frank Casper, and all finished off by the wizardry of Leighton James. There followed two seasons of sublime football including promotion back to the top division and a Cup semi-final appearance that Burnley did not deserve to lose. Had they reached Wembley the income would have changed the course of Burnley history. Two years later however the 1976 Cup defeat at Blackpool was one of the club’s worst low spots. From then on it was very much downhill.
When he brought Sunderland to Burnley it was a roughhouse game that did no credit to Sunderland and there was a public slanging match between Lord and Adamson. They were troubled times and the acrimony between the two figures festered for years.
Paul Fletcher and Colin Waldron have longed to get him to make an appearance at Turf Moor. They got very close on the night of a Liverpool Cup-tie and got him to the ground. But the game was postponed. Should he ever make an appearance he would I am sure receive a rapturous welcome. The likelihood of this happening decreases with each passing moment.
He had a wonderful career, success as a player, two golden years of Burnley management… but then it all turned sour. If you wanted to write a Burnley ‘novel’ along the lines of David Peace’s The Damned United, then the relationship between Adamson and Lord (and Potts) would fit the bill perfectly.
ANOTHER POINT NEARER BUT IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN THREE: The talk on the coach on the way to Derby was of Southampton and their suggested imminent demise. If this club folds before the end of the season then the league tables will be re-written and as things stand on the morning of the Derby game, Burnley would still be in the top six but only one single point ahead of Preston. The big losers would be Birmingham, who would slip from 2nd to 3rd. Reading who have only won two of the last 11 games would amazingly become 2nd. Please if we get in the play-offs can we play Reading?
Should we worry? Probably not; these clubs that fall into dire circumstances always seem to survive, seem to find a buyer, go into administration and emerge minus ten points, but still alive. No doubt Southampton, the situation complicated by the fact that is the holding company that has got into difficulties, will no doubt lurch along. Relegation for them seems odds on. The family and relations we have in Southampton who are all Saints fans are chewing their finger nails though.
The game was a good one, a blood and thunder; exciting, passionate, no-holds barred almost old-style game in that an unusually tolerant referee constantly waved play on when others would have punished the heavy challenges. Derby had clearly been instructed to get into Burnley and to be disruptive. They duly obliged. Savage could have been yellow carded in the early minutes for a trip on Elliot. Elliot was later seemingly (it was down the far end) shoved over after a bit of a handbags moment with a defender, Gudjonnson was denied a penalty when he was brought down in the box near the end.
 33,000 filled the noisy stadium in the sunshine and it looked like we would take all three points home after McCann capitalised on a fumble/mix-up between goalkeeper and defenders following Eagles’ cross. He looked so surprised to find the ball at his feet just a yard out that I swear he looked at the referee to ask for permission to kick it home.
After that Burnley were in complete control. Sure Derby had occasional moments, but Blake had a snap shot from 30 yards that clipped the side netting and then suddenly there he was on the penalty spot, the ball at his feet, unmarked, no defender anywhere near… but somehow the chance vanished as he failed to control or was taken by surprise. It would have wrapped it up as would the obvious penalty.
And then for the last ten minutes we decided to run the clock down. Alexander, tweaked something somewhere, was replaced by Duff. Derby made no chances; we decided to play out time in the corner areas as we had done at Plymouth. There it paid off, here it didn’t.
We buggered about as close to the flag as possible, dillied, dallied, dithered, played sweet little triangles, ignoring opportunities to get the ball into the box, and of course paid the price this time. There were times when we screamed for the ball to be crossed, and then noticed that not a player was in the box, they were all in the corner jiggering about. Of course we lost the ball at last. Of course they set off up the field like an express train. Of course Teale beat Williams and of course he sent a good cross over. And of course they bloody scored… in the 93rd minute. And of course we felt like we’d been kicked in the teeth. From the jaws of victory we snatch a draw… or something like that.
But Preston and Bristol drew later in the day so the status quo remains, Burnley with 66 points and Preston 62 points; with Burnley having the better goal difference. Results from Cardiff v Swansea and Wolves v Birmingham still to come. Sheffield United gather even more momentum with another win. It is conceivable that it is they who will snatch the second automatic spot. Burnley to do this needed to win today and the two points lost probably ends that marginal pipe-dream hope. Birmingham have scored just 47 goals and somehow this has gained them 2nd spot. Where is the reward for goals and attacking play in that?
Coyle was clearly disappointed seeing it as two points lost. On balance I suppose we all do. In the last 5 or 6 minutes I doubt Derby had 30 seconds of possession… but in those 30 seconds up they go and score. A play-off game like this with a last-minute giveaway goal would be a horrendous scenario.
Both Nigel Clough and Derby Chairman Adam Pearson had good things to say about Burnley… how we set a yardstick for running a small club responsibly, sensibly and shrewdly.
“They are a benchmark for teams looking to achieve promotion to the Primier League in a stable and responsible way. In many ways they are a team we would like to emulate in coming seasons – modestly yet methodically assembled and playing attractive football that achieves good results... Owen Coyle and his staff have done a magnificent job in putting together a hungry and talented squad of players… they are well run off the pitch and have capable guys in the boardroom who give stability, resource and football know how… “
Kind words indeed but after the game Clough’s comment that he thought a point was the least they deserved made me wonder if he was at different game.
ALEXANDER SIGNS FOR ANOTHER YEAR: The man is amazing and only a muscle tweak meant he had to jog off after 80 minutes at Derby. It is possible that it was his departure that led to the surrender of the two points in the last minute. He spent the afternoon at Derby controlling things, mopping up the little messes, making the short but simple passes, leading with an example of iron grit, allied with calmness and resolve.
You see him constantly talking to other players, sometimes it’s arms round the shoulder stuff, or he issues severe bollockings – often to dear old Wayne.
You see him playing on until he is 40. Ade has gone. Some of the expensive deadwood will leave in the summer (already out on loan), money will be freed up, 5 youths have been retained, and some astute play in the summer transfer market could all find us another good team next season.
Dave Thomas April 5th 2009
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