Sean Dyche knows home form will be vital to Burnley’s hopes of survival and he will be delighted with a return of 10 points from five games. They have yet to pick up anything on their travels but after inflicting only a second league defeat of the season on Ronald Koeman’s side they can claim home wins against Liverpool and Everton.
Turf Moor must have some sort of hoodoo over Merseyside, though there was nothing mysterious about this result. Burnley made two clear chances and took them both. Everton had a pile of pressure but little in the way of final product. It was almost like a rerun of events in the 1-1 draw with Manchester City at the Etihad last week, though this time it was Everton who were left feeling they had been mugged.
“It’s hard to take, going home with no points, but it happens,” Koeman said. “Football is really unfair sometimes. You don’t always get what you deserve.”
Dyche knows all about that, after Arsenal’s dubious late winner in Burnley’s previous home game, but his theory that luck evens out over a season seems to be holding up. “We were a bit lucky, but we still had to earn it,” the Burnley manager said. “Everton are a fine side and we did well to stay in the game, not to mention scoring two terrific goals.”
Burnley were riding their luck right from the start when a Yannick Bolasie run caused panic in Everton’s first attack. The ball ran free to leave Kevin Mirallas a presentable shooting opportunity from close to the penalty spot and Tom Heaton had to rescue his side with a point-blank save. The Burnley goalkeeper was in action again after a quarter of an hour, diving to his left to beat out a shot from Ross Barkley, restored to the Everton side after being left out last week at City.
With Ben Mee foiling Romelu Lukaku in the act of shooting and Mirallas seeing another effort blocked by Scott Arfield on the edge of the penalty area, Everton must have been beginning to feel like City in that game – well on top but constantly thwarted by last-ditch defending. It appeared to be only a matter of time before Burnley conceded, yet as Koeman admitted Everton’s intensity dipped after a bright start.
Even so it was a surprise when Burnley took the lead just before the interval. The Etihad hero Maarten Stekelenburg will not be so seen to watch replays of this weekend’s work. Though he did well to get down to an Arfield shot that picked up a deflection on the way through, he neither claimed the ball or pushed it to safety and ended up offering the easiest of tap-ins to Sam Vokes, who had been following up more in hope than expectation.
The second half began with a sharper-looking Everton swarming around the Burnley penalty area in search of an equaliser. A cross from Mirallas was fizzed along the six-yard line a touch too firmly for Lukaku to reach, but they were once again finding gaps to exploit in the Burnley defence and were back on terms after an hour. When a positional error by Mee allowed Lukaku a clear run at goal from Idrissa Gueye’s pass, the striker found Bolasie at his elbow practically nudging him off the ball in his eagerness to take over the chance.
If that took some confidence after the finishing prowess Lukaku showed in a similar situation at City, Bolasie did not disappoint, powering into the area to shoot early and decisively past Heaton.
That left over half an hour for Everton to come up with a winner, and even with Gerard Deulofeu sent on to join Bolasie in making life uncomfortable for the home full-backs, they could not manage it. Though Burnley rarely crossed the halfway line following the equaliser, it turned out they were merely biding their time. “They waited for one moment and got it,” a rueful Koeman said.
Burnley put together a determined attack in the final minute and for the second time caught Everton cold. Johann Berg Gudmundsson’s shot crashed against the bar, and before the defence could congratulate themselves on a lucky escape, Arfield expertly stuck away the rebound. Joyous scenes for one side, dejection for the other, but what comes around goes around.
