Ben Mee is talking hangovers. Not the pounding kind induced by a night on the sauce. Rather the lingering deflation which can anchor the mood when things have not worked out as envisaged, a sense of anticlimax with which Burnley’s captain is battling.
His team’s seventh-place finish last season, their best in 44 years, had carried the promise of Europa League football. Yet, having squeezed beyond Aberdeen and Istanbul Basaksehir, they were cast out in the play-off round by Olympiakos with the group stage tantalisingly close. Mee played four of the six-match qualification campaign but could be forgiven if his overriding memory was of being spat at by locals in Piraeus as he sat behind the dugout at the Georgios Karaiskakis Stadium. Or the bedlam backstage at half-time in that first leg, all Greek temper tantrums in the tunnel with the tie 1-1 and the visitors holding the upper hand.
“The thing is the appetite is still there to play at that level – none of it put us off,” he says. “People spent the summer warning us how difficult it would be to combine Thursday in Europe with maintaining standards in the Premier League, but the chance to compete in the Europa League was an attraction. So many of the boys hadn’t had that on their CVs. It was all new and exciting, and a challenge we wanted to embrace. So to go out when so close ... it was horribly disappointing. At least we gave it a proper go in the second leg against Olympiakos, when we threw everything at them and created so many chances. It just wasn’t to be.
“But there was bound to be some kind of fallout from that. We’d targeted Europe for a season and brought new faces in over the summer with Europa League football in mind. Then, suddenly, it was snatched away and we were having to refocus ‘only’ on the Premier League, as daft as that sounds. It did affect us, as a group. Maybe that explains a bit why we had such a downbeat start in the league. But the manager comes into his own on things like that. We had a good few meetings about our plans, our targets, in the September international break and tried to remind ourselves what we’re good at, what our qualities are.”
The message appeared to sink in. Burnley, bottom after five winless games, restored some equilibrium to scramble into mid-table before Saturday’s trip to the champions, Manchester City. The captain admits they are yet truly to recapture last season’s form. Mee, who admits to being highly self-critical, is striving for rhythm having missed the last six weeks of the previous campaign with a shin injury which troubled him through the summer. A team who played 41 matches last season know their 16th competitive game of this term will test whether last year’s resilience is restored.
Yet, as daunting as an occasion at the Etihad Stadium can be, the hope is it brings out the best in Burnley. Dyche had 11 players who started at least 20 Premier League games last season and they were a settled side, comfortable with the way the manager had them playing. Plenty of opponents underestimated them, assuming they would blow Burnley away, only to run aground on stubborn resistance and, in their frustration, succumb to unheralded qualities at the other end.
“But teams know about us now and consider us very differently,” says Mee. “Where they took us a bit lightly, now our reputation precedes us. Maybe sides aren’t quite as ambitious against us. Suddenly we have to break them down, rather than the other way round.” City, however, do not fall into that category and, if the visitors are to claim anything, they will need to fall back on something more akin to a rearguard action. The kind that served them so well last year.
Mee spent 12 years at City and captained them to the FA Youth Cup a decade ago, hoisting the trophy after a two-leg win over Chelsea – “We were all local lads, and Chelsea had spent heavily bringing in kids from around the world with a £2m striker [Miroslav Stoch] up front” – 137 days before the Abu Dhabi United Group began its purchase of the club from Thaksin Shinawatra. Mee is now a relative veteran of more than 100 top-flight games, a defender who has shifted from left-back to centre-half, and a stalwart committed to a new three-year contract at Burnley.
“I remember my first game at this level, against Chelsea at Turf Moor back in 2014, when Cesc Fàbregas put that little ball in between me and the centre-half for André Schürrle to score. It was a real ‘wow, this is the Premier League’ moment.
“Experience has helped in the time since, getting used to the rhythm and speed of these top-class players, not just around the pitch but in the mind, too. You have to expect the unexpected sometimes. You know any mistake you make will be punished, and City are capable of doing that more than most. We’ve gone there a couple of times, been in the game for a while and then, all of a sudden, bang, bang, bang and they’re two or three ahead of you. You’re left thinking: ‘How did that happen?’ So it boils down to concentration. Being on your guard. If you let your standard slip for a split second, they’re in with the quality they have. If you switch off, that’s it. They exploit it.
“It can be a long afternoon. But it’s something I enjoy, being able to defend against these top players. You’ve got to embrace it, I guess. You do want to play football and go and attack them, but sometimes they don’t allow you to, so you dig in and work hard; something we’re really good at. Our defenders and midfielders work their socks off. The attackers, too. That’s where our success has come from: working together, everyone getting involved. The manager sets the tone.”
Mee signed for Eddie Howe at Turf Moor but has been key to so much Dyche’s team have achieved. At 29, he is preparing for life beyond his playing days. He has started studying for his Uefa B coaching badge. He has dabbled in an Open University degree in sports business studies, to which he will return when time permits. Yet his priority is rekindling some of last season’s momentum at Burnley. “Seeing this club progress, and to have played a part in that, is a source of pride. It’s been so long since the club has had it so good and it’s a challenge if we are going to keep building.
“People ask what our ambitions are now after finishing seventh. Consolidation in this division, be that mid-table, would still be fantastic and keep us moving in the right direction. But the boys want more than that. We want to match last year, a points tally [of 54] around the same, and that is feasible.”
