Sean Dyche’s Burnley do ugly chic rather well. Other teams may be more fashionable but it is the Lancashire club that lead the Championship promotion race heading into its home straight.
Their quest for an immediate return to the Premier League has taken in more than its fair share of jitters of late, never more so than in this nervy victory over a mid-table team with supposedly nothing to play for. Yet despite its nature, this was their 22nd win of the campaign – secured by Scott Arfield’s early goal – extending their longest unbeaten run in 34 years to 18 matches. As Dyche pointed out, as Premier League-chasing rivals were about to kick-off, at this time of year it is substance that matters over style.
“When you are hot, you are hot. When you are not you have to find a way,” said Dyche. “We were nowhere near as good as we can be with the ball. But the resilience of the side without the ball gave us the win.
“People have seen us play some unbelievable football but the last few have been grinds – and if you want to be successful in this division you have to win in whatever way you can. The reality is we are top of the league for a reason – you cannot use the word luck when you have 80 points at this stage of the season.”
Despite being the division’s top scorers with 63, Burnley could not register a winner in the midweek stalemate with Cardiff. However, their manager stuck with the same XI and it took them less than a minute for them to notch number 64 this time.
Cheers at the announcement of Sam Vokes’s Championship player of the month award were still hanging in the air around Turf Moor when the Wales international rose to beat Sol Bamba in an aerial challenge; the second tier’s leading scorer, Andre Gray, anticipated it and switched the ball into the feet of Arfield, who stole the yard necessary to get a shot in and struck it with such precision that it bisected the gap between Marco Silvestri’s fingertips and the base of the far post.
Perfect start it may have been, yet it was a Leeds team in mid-table rather than the leaders that looked likeliest to alter the scoreline until substitute Ashley Barnes’s contender for miss of the season in injury-time. The visitors rained in 19 efforts on goal, and won the corner count 11-2. But they could not unearth an equaliser.
Burnley held the lead at halfway, and that’s exactly how they like it. This was the 14th occasion they had done so, and only Sheffield Wednesday, with a draw, have prevented them winning.
Leeds should have doubled the number. That they did not was chiefly down to Chris Wood’s profligacy in front of goal. Twenty-five months ago, Wood’s long-ranger completed a 2-0 Leicester win on this ground that put Nigel Pearson’s team 15 points clear of third on their way to promotion. Here, he dispatched two more presentable headed chances off target from virtually the same spot inside the six-yard box either side of the substitute Mirco Antenucci being shoved in the back while shooting.
In summing up, Steve Evans, the Leeds head coach, branded it a “clear penalty”. “If Burnley are winning games like today they are destined to be in the Premier League. The mystery to us is how we have lost it,” he said.
The home support amongst the 18,000 crowd were forced to live on their nerves until the final whistle after Gray spurned one chance via a heavy touch to Barnes’s centre. Gray then looked on from the bench as Barnes, with the goal at his mercy, lost his composure and dragged wide.
The chants of “We are top of the league” confirmed it mattered not.
