The Clarets have long been a pin-up for pragmatism and determination, but their time in the Premier League appears to be coming to an end
(Image credit: Getty)
It was on New Year’s Eve that the takeover was completed. Burnley began 2021 with new owners and ended it with the fewest points (34) and wins (seven) of the 92 Premier and Football League clubs in the calendar year. The chances are that 2022 will bring an end to their longest spell of top-flight football in more than half a century.
Maybe Burnley will have sleepwalked into the Championship. Certainly ALK Capital, their new owners, might have done. When acquiring Burnley, they described “an established Premier League club.”
True as that was, a leveraged buyout of a debt-free club surely came with the expectation of the future revenues from participation with the elite. The numbers may not add up for a second-tier outfit, but realism ought to have dictated that demotion was a possibility every year and that circumstances were making it more possible.
Maybe Burnley themselves have not acknowledged the severity of their plight. Perhaps that makes sense: Sean Dyche rarely panics, preferring to repeat his tried-and-trusted methods with the players who have served him so well before. And yet, inside and outside Turf Moor, the past may have camouflaged the problems.
Burnley had two points from six games this season, but they began last with one from six. They are on 11 points from 17 games now but they had 12 points at the half-way stage in 2018/19. In both previous campaigns, they stayed up with something to spare.
Outsiders can suppose their experience, know-how and pragmatism will be enough without recognising that Burnley are in a more perilous position than before, and not merely because it seems that three of four teams will go down and one of the others have the resources to spend heavily.
There is an assumption that will get out of it, that their inherent Burnleyness will bring forgettable, efficient home wins, stemming from clean sheets and set-piece expertise.
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But Burnley have one home league win in 348 days; they stayed up last season because of some brilliant away victories, but that has not proved a sustainable formula. They only have three clean sheets this season. They have conceded as many set-piece goals as they have scored. Chris Wood, a guarantee of a goal tally in double figures every Premier League season, only has three so far.
And now Dyche’s good senior pros may be too senior. Burnley named their oldest team since World War 2 against Huddersfield on Saturday. They have fielded the oldest sides in the Premier League this season. When most of their opponents are more talented, they always required a physical edge and it is harder to outrun opponents when they are older than them. Years have taken their toll on players who have had to work ferociously hard.
Some are in decline. Ashley Barnes has lost his threat completely. Ben Mee, Jack Cork, Jay Rodriguez and Johann Berg Gudmundsson are past their best. The squad is populated by players such as Aaron Lennon, Erik Pieters and Phil Bardsley who are older still.
In the summer of 2020, when their only recruit was the cheap Dale Stephens, it seemed as though the previous regime’s budget policy as they sought to sell the club was to rely on Dyche to keep them up. It is something he has done skillfully, but it meant the squad went into a state of disrepair.
Burnley actually bought well last summer, in the revelation Maxwel Cornet and the promising Nathan Collins, while Connor Roberts promises to be a third fine acquisition. Yet between September 2017 and May 2021, their acquisitions had been a handful of largely ageing qualified successes, in Rodriguez, Lennon, Pieters and the younger Josh Brownhill, and failures.
(Image credit: PA Images)
Dyche may have sounded the alarm in private but years of neglect mean Burnley needed at least one more good-quality striker, winger and central midfielder by now. Meanwhile, pursuing a very different game plan meant they were rarely judged by the same criteria as other teams.
They came seventh in 2018 without scoring highly for possession or pass completion or chance creation. But, within their own parameters, Burnley often played well.
Now they often don’t: they can look tired, with more errors creeping in, especially at the back. They were outclassed by Championship opponents in the FA Cup this season, in Huddersfield, just as they were last season, by Bournemouth. Now when they are found in the bottom three of virtually every attacking or possession statistic, it feels an accurate reflection that they are one of the worst teams on the ball. And two of their poorest performances, against Newcastle and Leeds, came against their peers near the bottom.
They have a solitary league victory all season. Even teams who draw a lot tend to require at least eight to stay up meaning Burnley would have to win seven of their remaining 21 games. If it were another club, the obituaries would have already been written. Instead, many have been lulled into a false sense of security that they will revert to being the Burnley of old. The greater likelihood is that an old Burnley team will go down.
Richard Jolly also writes for the National, the Guardian, the Observer, the Straits Times, the Independent, Sporting Life, Football 365 and the Blizzard. He has written for the FourFourTwo website since 2018 and for the magazine in the 1990s and the 2020s, but not in between. He has covered 1500+ games and remembers a disturbing number of the 0-0 draws.
