Burnley 5:0 Forest

Where do I start with this one ? I wasn’t supposed to be here, I had tickets for the Reading game for my boys birthday, but his dodgy guts put paid to that trip (which we won, obviously) so had to be rearranged for this fiasco.

I left the house at 8am, dropped my other lad off at his swimming lessons before driving down to the ground in plenty of time for a bit of McDonalds breakfast. Safely on the coach with a decent seat with time to spare. Why mention all this ? Because in that period I made more f***ing effort than the useless t**ts who failed to turn up in Forest shirts.

Spineless, lacking in effort, clueless, bottlers. All adjectives that could describe the Forest team if they improved. I don’t think there are adjectives for how they played on Saturday.

Not that Burnley were all that better.

For the first fifteen minutes, I don’t think either side put two passes together. The pitch resembled the rolling moors seen on the magical mystery tour the official coaches took us on. That may well be the last time I use the official coach. 4½ hours to go 100 miles up the road is a long time in anyone’s book. I could have f***ing walked it quicker. The local plod didn’t help, the whole town of Burnley seems to be stuck in some mid eighties time warp, from the Neanderthal support through 2 coppers for every fan. It’s the twenty first century where I live.

The wind stopped any passing over 2 foot off the ground, so the initial period was poor to say the least.

Then the strange things started to happen.

Robbie Blake (remember when we had him ?) hit a free kick straight into Paul Smith’s arms from somewhere near my house. Paul Smith decided he didn’t need to catch it with his arms as he had this net type thing behind him to stop the path of the ball. One nil down without either side entering the opposition box. One nil became two nil when Robbie Blake, again, decided to ballet dance his way through the Forest defence, a task made a whole lot easier when the forest defence decided to let him through without so much as coughing in his general direction, let alone putting in a sodding tackle. The scramble on the line underlined the farcical nature of the game so far.

The linesman decided to join in the fun by giving Nathan Tyson offside from a Burnley back-pass. Sensing his mistake, the linesman then called over the referee to point out his error to the whole crowd. Clown.

Whatever was said at half time clearly had no effect whatsoever as we had shipped another within 3 minutes, Luke Chambers deciding the job of right back didn’t include defending the right side of Forest’s, and I use the word lightly, defence. Burnley’s fourth looked good, but was made a lot easier by a repeat of the no-tackling philosophy trialled in the first half and a goalkeeper nailed to the floor. Their fifth was taken well, but assisted by a Forest team who had long since decided that the only way a pass was going to result in a goal was if it was straight to a Burnley player in our box.

The Burnley website states that they only had four shots on target all game, yet they won 5:0. Strange. But not half as strange as the tannoy announcing that the Burnley sponsor’s man-of-the-match was their left-back !!! Five goals, five different scorers and their left back is man-of-the-match ? What did he do to win that ? I reckon he must have been in the sponsors box for ninety minutes making tea, serving sandwiches or moulding balloon animals for the kids, ‘cause it certainly wasn’t for any defending he had to do.

The Burnley ground is poor. Two decent stands and an old style main stand for the home fans, but what can only be described as a museum was allocated for the travelling Trickies. Colder down below than up top, a smaller tele than I’ve got in my phone showing the Man United / Liverpool laugh-a-thon and that old staple from the 1950’s, wooden seats.

So, a p**s poor performance, rotting ground, in-bred opposition fans, over zealous police, rumours of Billy Davies falling out with certain players and a numb a**e from sitting on wooden planks & a coach for eight hours.

Happy Birthday, son.