{"id":4699,"date":"2022-01-24T12:33:07","date_gmt":"2022-01-24T12:33:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=4699"},"modified":"2022-01-29T09:45:53","modified_gmt":"2022-01-29T09:45:53","slug":"i-like-football-but-not-burnley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=4699","title":{"rendered":"I like Football but Not Burnley"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Burnley players were given double helpings of their managers favourite meal, following their game yesterday.
Picture courtesy of Istockphoto.com<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Arsenal were held by Burnley in a frustrating goalless draw at the Emirates on a bitterly cold January afternoon. Arteta made just the one change from Thursday\u2019s disappointing league cup exit to Liverpool, with Rob Holding coming in for Takehiro Tomiyasu, who clearly wasn\u2019t fully fit on Thursday. Due to Cedric also being unavailable, Ben White was shunted out to right back, a position he played in our Boxing Day thumping of Norwich. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was a sense of pre match trepidation for this one; We were yet to win a game in 2022 and had exited both cup competitions in a matter of days. That said, this was our first league match since that exemplar of daylight robbery on New Year\u2019s Day against Citeh. Burnley won the coin toss and made the typically spiteful decision to switch ends. The crowd groaned. I\u2019m not sure if it\u2019s just because I prefer it when we attack the North Bank in the second half, but we don\u2019t seem to have a great record of winning when that happens. We kicked off and the Rugby League Rejects took all of six minutes to start time wasting. We still dominated possession although we struggled to find any sort of rhythm. Burnley had the first attempt of sorts as they worked the ball out to the left and Dwight McNeil, probably the only Burnley player who doesn\u2019t look like he has a forklift truck license, struck a cross-cum-shot which Ramsdale palmed behind. We had our first real chance of the game when \u00d8degaard, Smith Rowe and Lacazette exchanged passes, with the ball then breaking back to Smith Rowe off a Burnley player. He cut it back to Odegaard who struck it hard and low, but it was saved by the leg of Nick Pope. The ball then broke to Lacazette in line with the penalty spot, who checked inside and saw his goal bound effort blocked by Ben Mee. Finally, a spark of life in what had been a drab affair thus far. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The game continued to drift along without a great deal of urgency from either side. Just before the break, we did manage to carve out another decent chance on goal. Tierney\u2019s long pass found Smith Rowe who fed \u00d8degaard. The Norwegian, who always seems to play the right pass, played in Saka who cut inside onto his favoured left peg, and fired an effort narrowly wide of the far post. No goals at the break. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second half began with Arsenal continuing to dominate possession without much thrust and Burnley looking for any sort of counterattack to catch us out. Their incessant time-wasting tactics continued with Nick Pope taking his sweet time over every goal kick. Clacking out his studs on the post on that state-of-the-art pitch will have enraged the groundmen I\u2019m sure. Clearly, Pope is a big fan of those reruns of games from those 70\u2019s games on ITV4 where there\u2019s more mud than pitch. England\u2019s fourth choice \u2018keeper indeed. Arsenal plodded on trying to break down the resolute Burnley defence who, to their credit, stuck to their task. Sean Dyche has clearly introduced his gravel and earthworms\u2019 diet to his players. On the hour we won a freekick practically on the 18-yard line. \u00d8degaard and Lacazette stood over it. The Norwegian skipper, who scored a brilliant free kick in the fixture at Turf Moor in September, almost repeated the trick with his effort skimming the roof of the net. Unlucky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We then began a ten-minute siege on the Burnley goal where it seemed a goal was inevitable, but it just never arrived. We won yet another corner and \u00d8degaard\u2019s quick thinking allowed him to fire in a sizzling low pass to Smith Rowe who was steaming into the box, but the England international\u2019s well struck effort was brilliantly saved by Nick Pope. The Hale End graduate was at the epicentre of our next move which was really our best chance of the match. Tierney played another long pass down the left-hand side to Smith Rowe who peeled off the back of James Tarkowski and steamed past him, leaving the one capped England defender in the dust. ESR stormed into the box and cut it back to Lacazette who somehow stabbed it agonisingly past the far post when it seemed easier to score than miss. In fairness to the Frenchman, he was put under pressure at the last second by Ben Mee, but a striker of his quality has to be burying those. A real head in hands moment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arteta then made the questionable decision to take off Smith Rowe for Nketiah. I\u2019m an Eddie fan but it really killed any momentum we had left. In fairness to Arteta, we had a real lack of options due to injuries and Afcon (no false positives here, Jurgen) which had decimated our squad in recent weeks. In fact, Nketiah was our only attacking option who had played in the Premier League. We had five academy players on the bench yet to make their premier league debuts (Alebiosu, Patino, Salah Eddine, Hutchinson and Biereth) and in fact Patino was the only one of those who had any sort of minutes for the first team and even he had less than 90 minutes under his belt. Is Arteta cutting off his nose to spite his face with the Aubameyang situation? There\u2019s every chance the skipper could have made a difference today, he has an excellent record against Burnley, but fair play to the manager for sticking to his guns. However, the fact that the Eddie sub was the only change we made all game was telling. Our need for a central midfielder that doesn\u2019t get sent off every other game and a twenty goal a season striker is getting more obvious by the game. A week left until the transfer window shuts. Tick tock, Edu, tick tock. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, overall 2022 hasn\u2019t been great for our lads. Stuart Atwell and Jurgen Klopp will pay for their sins one way or another. Another disappointing result against Burnley today. As William Makenzie said in the Inbetweeners movie, \u201cI like football but not Burnley. Burnley can f*ck off.\u201d Truly a sentiment we can all agree with wholeheartedly. Onto Wolves away in about 100 days\u2019 time. Hope Burnley get relegated. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Arsenal were held by Burnley in a frustrating goalless draw at the Emirates on a bitterly cold January afternoon. Arteta made just the one change from Thursday\u2019s disappointing league cup exit to Liverpool, with Rob Holding coming in for Takehiro Tomiyasu, who clearly wasn\u2019t fully fit on Thursday. Due to Cedric also being unavailable, Ben […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4699"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4699"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4702,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4699\/revisions\/4702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}