This was a game we shouldn’t have lost, but we let ourselves down at both ends of the field, to allow Burnley to take all three points.
As expected there was a substantial police presence in the town centre, but the only man I saw coming close to being arrested was one of the local drunks. Amidst all the excitement, a horse passed comment on the quality of Burnley’s high street by taking a dump on it.
Inside the ground the Leeds fans were keen to taunt the hosts with the chant "champions again”, to remind the hosts that we pipped them to the Championship title last season. And for much of the game we were to give the match most of it’s atmosphere, as ever.
And as the players took the anti-racism knee before kick-off I wondered why some fans were booing, but it turned out that it was down to Calvert-Lewin declining to perform this gesture, though surely as a man of mixed race he’s entitled to make that decision.
Daniel Farke made just the one enforced change to the starting line-up, with Harrison coming in for the injured Okafor, resisting the temptation to recall Perri in place of Darlow. His philosophy is clearly that the player with the shirt will keep it if he continues to play well. James was only fit enough to make the bench.
For most of the first half we dominated possession, but the only half chance we created during the first half an hour was an overhead kick from Calvert-Lewin, which was some way past the post. And by the time we came close to scoring again, Burnley had taken the lead.
Ultimately it came from a goal-kick, which went straight into touch as none of Darlow’s team mates were on the same wavelength. As the first throw was cleared Harrison had to race back to prevent a corner, deciding that another throw in was the better option. But when that was cleared back to Kyle Walker, Ugochukwu was allowed far too much space to meet his excellent cross, and steer the ball past Darlow into the corner of the net.
We took a while to respond, but finally managed to carry a bit more threat in the closing stages of the first half. Harrison intercepted a poor ball as Burnley attempted to play out, and slipped the ball to Aaronson to his right. Brenda really should have scored, but shot straight at the advancing Dúbravka, with the ball deflecting of the keeper’s legs onto the post.
And a minute before the break Stach had the opportunity to score his second free kick of the season, and again opted to strike it powerfully to the side of the goal the keeper was protecting. But Dúbravka proved more adept than Wolves keeper Sa, and made the save. Perhaps Stach needs to consider going over the wall, as shooing close to the keeper might not work that often.
If anything we had an even bigger share of the possession in the second half, but Burnley’s well organised defence had a lead to protect, and our attack was still looking ineffective. Calvert-Lewin was looking isolated with no one to get on the end of his flick-ons, but it took Farke until the 66th minute to decide that a more adventurous line-up was needed.
Harrison’s last act was to hit a volley down into the ground, which might have been the right idea, but he hit it too hard, and the ball bounced over the bar. The two wide players were removed, and the social media reviews of Harrison’s and Aaronson’s performances have ranged from "rubbish” to "at least they tried hard”.
James and Nmecha came on, so we had two centre forwards and Gudmundsson was left with a lot of work to do on the left, with no natural winger in front of him. I would have introduced Piroe before Nmecha, as he might have been a more effective partner for Calvert-Lewin. In any case, Burnley were to score before our new formation could show what it could do.
That came from just about their only attack of the second half, but Tchaouna was allowed to approach our penalty area with no one closing him down. And he accepted the invitation to score a ‘worldie’ from 25 yards, curling the ball into the top corner. That prompted Farke to go for his ‘bung all the forwards on and hope for the best’ routine as the finat quarter of an hour approached.
I finally got my wish as Piroe came on for Stach, who had been fairly invisible apart from his free kick, though with so many central strikers now on the field I’m not sure that they all knew what their role was meant to be. The final sub saw Tanaka replacing Ampadu, as our manager really went for broke.
The best chance we created in the closing stages came when Calvert-Lewin headed back across the face of goal towards Bogle at the far post. But our man was distracted by having Dúbravka rapidly bearing down on him, and sent his shot over the bar. At least we were showing more urgency by this stage, with lots of quick passing, but were still unable to get past an 11 man defence.
Burnley’s most annoying player horrible Hannibal didn’t come on until the 83rd minute, but still had time to provoke a fracas with a scissor challenge on Gudmunsson on the touchline. And his final act was to get himself in trouble for allegedly spitting towards the Leeds fans at the end of the game. Lovely man.
Six minutes of injury time were announced, but that wasn’t long enough for Leeds to engineer a breakthrough, and we had gone down to another disappointing defeat. We were left with the sad sight of the Leeds players trying to give the travelling fans their thanks for their support, only to find that most of them had already left.
This is the third game in a row when we should have got a better result than we did, and I’ll make use of the stats sent to me by friend Martin Gilson, from somewhere a lot sunnier than Burnley. For those three games then new-fangled ‘XGs’ were 4.04 for us and 1.93 for for the combined forces of AFCB, Spurs and Burnley.
We had 54 shots for and 25 against, of which 16 of ours were on target, compared 11 of our opponents’. But just to prove we’ve been shooting straight at the other side’s goalkeepers, "pesky goal-type things” resulting from these shots were 3 for us and 6 for them. Oh, and we got 1 point, compared to 7 for the others.
All of which is very worrying as we start to slip down the table. We’re still 15th, but two of the clubs beneath have already changed managers and might see their results improve, even if one of them is Forest. And our current rate of getting one point per game might not be enough in a season where there aren’t any obvious candidates for finishing a long way adrift of the rest.
So Friday night’s game at home to West Ham is starting to look absolutely massiiiive. Watch this space.