Right, I’m off to beat my head repeatedly against a wall until all memory of the last couple of hours is gone. Have a great rest-of-weekend, everyone. Bye!
Updated
Burnley’s point takes them 18th, and they could finish the day in 17th if Newcastle get a handsome derby win.
Burnley 0-0 Tottenham: the media reacts:
FT Burnley 0-0 Tottenham. Thank God that's over.
— Martyn Ziegler (@martynziegler) April 5, 2015
Let’s never speak of this again.
— Iain Macintosh (@iainmacintosh) April 5, 2015
Final score: Burnley 0-0 Tottenham
90+4 mins: It’s over!
90+3 mins: Seven seconds! Spurs take their throw!
90+3 mins: 20 seconds! Spurs have a throw!
90+3 mins: Only 45 seconds to go!
Updated
90+1 mins: Oooooooh! Trippier’s long throw is headed into the air by Davies, nodded back by Jutkiewicz and headed goalwards by Boyd! Vorm was scrambling nervously across his line, but the ball went wide. Incidentally, there will be three minutes of stoppage time.
90 mins: Heaton does something! It was an Eriksen cross, and he came and punched it clear! He did!
88 mins: Tottenham win a throw-in in the defensive third! Yes they do!
@Simon_Burnton Have you actually been watching the game? Or (like me) are you just surfing the Internet? This is terrible...
— Travis Giblin (@travisgiblin) April 5, 2015
If only I was allowed to turn off. This is one of the season’s most turnoffable matches, but I am contractually obliged to watch the lot.
Updated
87 mins: Not this one. Bentaleb did have a shot, on the volley from 25 yards after the corner was cleared, but it flew well wide of goal.
87 mins: Chiriches overlaps down the right and is found, but his low cross is deflected behind. Still, it’s a corner, and fun things sometimes happen from corners.
85 mins: Barnes runs down the left, from where he slashes a lovely cross across the area. Nobody comes anywhere near meeting it, of course, but these moments of quality need to be celebrated today. “I just tuned into the match thinking it couldn’t be as dull as you make it sound,” writes Randal Smathers. “It’s worse. Aimless punts and poor technique. Spurs seem to have given up on CL and have commenced playing out the string.” I’m not entirely sure what playing out the string means, but you’re probably right.
84 mins: Fret not! Andros Townsend is on the pitch! Mason is no longer.
This game is great. Just when you think the quality can’t drop any further, someone tries to play a short pass and blasts it out of play.
— Iain Macintosh (@iainmacintosh) April 5, 2015
83 mins: Which is centred, cleared, re-centred, re-re-centred, cleared, won back and then Ings is offside.
82 mins: Another Burnley corner!
80 mins: Into the final 10 minutes. Will something happen to retrospectively make the last couple of hours of my life in some way worthwhile? Time alone will tell.
79 mins: Eriksen crosses, Dier flicks on and Paulinho flicks out a leg in an effort to turn the ball into the net! Sure, he misses. And yes, he was offside. But still, it was something.
Updated
78 mins: Ooof! Ben Mee attempts to amputate Lamela’s legs, and is booked.
76 mins: A substitution for Burnley, Lukas Jutkiewicz replacing Vokes.
75 mins: Burnley have another corner. They’ve had lots of them in this second half (at least three, anyway), though this, like the others, is cleared. Eventually the ball goes back to Trippier, still on the left wing after taking the corner, and his cross from deep curls and dips and nearly dips in at the far post! But doesn’t.
72 mins: Most unspeakably poor shot of the day award goes to Paulinho, who with Eriksen one way and Kane the other instead decides to weakly pass the ball to a spot about 15 yards wide of goal.
70 mins: Kane works space on the right by nutmegging Mee – his best moment of the match, no doubt about it – carries the ball along the touchline into the area, and then pulls back behind every onrushing attacker and eventually to Rose, whose long-range effort is poor.
69 mins: Chance for Spurs! Eriksen picks up the ball outside the penalty area, Paulinho distracts a couple of defenders with a run across him and the Dane runs into the empty pocket of penalty-area space before blazing over.
68 mins: Martin Atkinson does have his cards in his pocket! And he shows one to Trippier, for tripping (Trippiering?) Rose.
Updated
66 mins: Still, Burnly are having a spell of pressure at the moment. They’ve just had another corner, from which Ings had a shot blocked, and then Spurs break, but Eriksen tries to beat a man too many and Arfield takes it from him.
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65 mins: Those Burnley fans, they’re a positive bunch. Arfield wins a header, midway into the Spurs half, and sends the ball bouncing nowhere near any teammate and Vorm comes to collect. Arfield gets a rousing ovation, all the same.
64 mins: Erik Lamela is on for Spurs, and Chadli is off.
63 mins: Burnley swing the ball into the box again, and this time Vorm and his defensive henchmen do their best to improvise some chaos, but eventually clear it.
62 mins: Now Barnes has a 20-yard shot on the turn, which Vorm catches.
Updated
61 mins: Half a chance for Burnley! Well, 20% of a chance. Yet another right-wing cross, and Vokes sprints to the near-post to reach it! He doesn’t, really, but Chiriches, just behind him, is so surprised about it that the ball could have gone anywhere after it hit him! It went to Vorm, though.
59 mins: Rose bursts into the penalty area and then dives theatrically over nothing very much. The referee appears to have left his notebook at home today.
59 mins: Burnley just won a corner! Yes they did! It was a cross from the right that might just have looped into the net had Vorm not touched it over the bar. Anyway, the corner’s cleared. Here, as a reward for getting this far, have an arty photo of Harry Kane:
Updated
56 mins: Vokes and Dier compete for a header, the Burnley player levering himself upwards with elbows flaying, one of them into Dier’s head. The Spurs player went down and stayed down, but now seems fine.
55 mins: I’m really trying to find interesting moments of play to tell you about, honestly I am.
52 mins: Chiriches is now playing at right-back for Spurs, with Davies on the left of the two centre-backs and Rose still at left-back.
49 mins: The first attack of the half comes from Tottenham, and brings yet another shot from range (blocked) before Kane wanders offside.
47 mins: Now Walker is going off, and Ben Davies will replace him.
Peeeeeeep!
46 mins: Burnley restart, Kyle Walker being considered fit enough to start the second half even though he’s still limping badly.
The second half is imminent. While not being awful, there have been periods when this has wandered distressingly close to the neighbourhood of awful, the outer suburbs of terrible. It will surely improve from here. Won’t it? Won’t it?
“Watching Burnley’s endeavour and hearing the crowd’s appreciation of it I wonder if England could make a success of a team made up of non-fancy Dan players and instead pick tryers, tacklers, and the highly committed like Boyd or West Ham’s Nolan,” proposes Ian Copestake. “Any others?” There’d be no end of applicants, I think, a few of them already in the squad. For a start, Rooney would qualify, wouldn’t he?
6 - All six of Tottenham's shots in the first half against Burnley were from outside the box. Distant.
— OptaJoe (@OptaJoe) April 5, 2015
Half-time: Burnley 0-0 Tottenham
45+3 mins: Peeeeep! It is half time, the first half having been, to put it bluntly, a bit bobbins. Burnley had the game’s only proper good chance, and Ings sent it straight at the goalkeeper.
Updated
45+2 mins: We’re into the second of one minute of stoppage time here. We’ve spent the entirety of it so far waiting for Walker to get up – he took a big swing at a ball that Trippier was also running in to contest, kicked the Burnley man in the thigh and seems to have come out of it badly.
45 mins: Save! Ings gets the ball 25 yards out and tries to curl it across goal and into the top corner. It was a fine effort as well, but Vorm anticipated it and tipped wide!
Updated
43 mins: Boyd kicks the ball into Rose’s jaw from no distance at all. The Spurs defender seems entirely unbothered, but it looked painful.
41 mins: Nice attack from Burnley, who benefit from some half-hearted defending to win a right-wing cross and work it to Boyd, on the edge of the area, whose shot is just wide.
Updated
39 mins: Walker’s overhit cross is put out of play by Trippier, and Spurs thus have a corner, their second of the match. It’s played short to Mason, who passed back to Eriksen, whose shot is saved.
36 mins: Kane has some space at last, but sadly he’s had to retreat 40 yards from goal to locate it. He turns, runs forward 10 yards and then skews a low shot wide.
Updated
34 mins: Eriksen carries the ball 60 yards before winning a corner. At the moment this is anyone’s game (except, perhaps, the neutral’s).
32 mins: Burnley have a free-kick on the right; Trippier crosses excellently as usual, and Vokes heads high.
30 mins: Burnley play the ball down the right, and Chiriches blocks Boyd as he tries to keep it in. Both players go down in a penalty-area heap, but the referee thinks there’s nothing in it. And there wasn’t much, but I think the ball was far enough from Chiriches for you to argue that it wasn’t under his control when he impeded his rival.
Updated
28 mins: About 40 seconds later, Walker having won the ball and then run forward to collect a return pass from Kane, from his eventual pass the very same Mason is offside.
27 mins: Ings does well on the right, turns and passes to Boyd, bursting into the box. He lets the ball roll across him, and then dithers long enough for Mason to dispossess. A good opportunity for Burnley, that.
Updated
25 mins: Spurs attack down the right, work the ball to Eriksen just outside the penalty area, who lays it back to Mason, who shoots wide.
22 mins: Harry Kane gives away a throw-in, the first real evidence that the much-lauded in-form hitman is actually on the pitch.
21 mins: Bentaleb trips Jones on the left, and could very easily have been booked. He isn’t, and the free-kick is sent beyond the far post to Barnes, who volleys back into the mixer, from whence it emerges at a Tottenham foot, after ricocheting around a bit.
19 mins: Shackell crosses from deep on the left, and Vokes heads it straight up in the air. He and the defence are trotting upfield before the ball returns to earth, Vorm underneath it, but being the only human in the penalty area doesn’t stop him from screaming “KEEPER’S!!!”, just to be on the safe side.
18 mins: Trippier crosses from the right, and Kyle Walker nods it away just as it seemed destined to dip onto the head of a claret-shirted chap just beyond the back stick.
16 mins: Another Chadli shot, this time from just outside the penalty area, hit across goal. It’s hard and low, and though there’s no way Heaton should have let it past him, he did well to gather it.
14 mins: Chadli’s long-range shot is held by Heaton, Tottenham having spent a couple of minutes trying to work a way past Burnley’s two banks of four before giving up and just wellying it.
Updated
10 mins: Burnley keep hitting the ball early and long from the right flank diagonally to the left, looking for Barnes or Ings. Trippier is the latest to try, but it’s slightly overhit and Ings can only give away a throw-in near the touchline.
8 mins: Burnley have their tails up here. Boyd tries to run from midfield, gets hopelessly outpaced by a defender, who nicks the ball off him, takes it out wide and thinks his job is done. It’s not – Boyd doesn’t stop running, chases him down and wins a throw-in.
5 mins: What a chance for Burnley! And Ings misses it! Mason dwells on the ball, 10 yards outside his penalty area, and Boyd closes him down, shunts him off the ball and plays it through for Ings, who is clean through with two defenders breathing down his neck when he shoots straight down the middle from 10 yards.
Updated
3 mins: Tottenham control the opening exchanges, but then Bentaleb surrenders possession in midfield and Burnley break. A little. And then get a throw-in.
1 min: Ashley Barnes spears in the day’s first cross, which flies beyond both Burnley striker. It won’t be the last, methinks.
Peeeeeeeeep!
1 min: Action stations, as Tottenham get the match started.
Loud applause, you say. Remarkable stuff. By the way, Burnley is blessed with a gorgeous blue, cloudless sky today. I’ve not been for a few years, but remember Turf Moor for being blessed with the nation’s most scenic press box.
The players make their way out on to the pitch to loud applause from both sets of supporters. #COYS
— Tottenham Hotspur (@SpursOfficial) April 5, 2015
The players are now leaving the tunnel. Deep breath, world.
“Resistable force (Burnley ‘attack’) v ‘Moveable object’ (Tottenham defence) today?” wonders Lou Roper. “Hopefully, goals aplenty will be the result: 3-3?” Well that would be tempting fate – but it’s certainly worth pointing out that Spurs have only kept one clean sheet in the league this calendar year, and that’s with a defence featuring Lloris and Vertonghen, both out today, and as @steamyteabuns points out, their bench is defensively wobbly.
@Simon_Burnton given that Spurs line up, the question is, who plays centre half if either Dier or Vlad gets hurt?
— steep the tea bun (@steamyteabuns) April 5, 2015
Sean Dyche has had his pre-match chat with the TV folk:
We look for [the big teams to inspire them] of course. But we look for that to happen in all games. We’re well aware of the challenges of the Premier League now. We’re in there fighting, we are fighting. The margins are tight. They’re a fine side. They’ve spend £200m looking at their squad today, and they’ve got an in-form striker, but we’ve shown that we’re competitive in every game, and we want to be that today and we want to win.
We haven’t concentrated on Harry Kane, because they’ve got quality in different areas of the pitch. When you put that amount of finance into a team you expect to have good players. We can’t just work on one player, we have to work on the whole team. We’re aware of them, but it’s about what we do, how we perform. We’re generally happy with what we do. We create enough chances, we’ve got to take them chances.
The Tottenham manager has been speaking to Sky, who started by asking him about his starting XI, and in particular having Paulinho in the team and Townsend out of it. Obviously it’s not his first language, and I didn’t know whether it would be ruder to improve his English for him, or to leave it exactly as he said it. In the end I’ve left it, but mean no offence, honest. His English is a lot better than my Spanish:
Always some players injuries but after some tactical decision and after we’re fine to put the best XI to try to win the three points. Always we fine to put the best XI and to put the best player for each game. I think Harry deserve [to be captain]. After it’s a good opportunity to get the three points and performance well and try to stay high on the table. I think we have eight game. After this seven. It’s important to keep in the table higher in the table, and for that we must to win for to keep the chance to fight for the higher position. Burnley are a very difficult team. They run a lot, they play very well, good organise. A very tough team. I think they deserve more higher on the table. We expect today a very tough game. I think we need to be ready for fight because they play to survive. We need to be focused for this.
I’d just like to say, we scooped the Telegraph by 19 minutes on the Ings/Kane Twitter split-picture story. Please don’t click on their link, we’re much better.
Join @Simon_Burnton for the build-up to Burnley v Tottenham Hotspur – live! http://t.co/uUkAMYJX8f pic.twitter.com/tOLUmNUtWZ
— Guardian sport (@guardian_sport) April 5, 2015
Burnley vs Tottenham: LIVE! The teams are in. Check out all the latest right here http://t.co/WNPBc6t3wB #thfc pic.twitter.com/Yixqq1T7m0
— Telegraph Football (@TeleFootball) April 5, 2015
Someone always sends in a picture of the programme, so here it is. You have to look quite hard to find out who Burnley are playing:
Sky have thrust their microphone in the face of a couple of footballers. First, there was Michel Vorm:
The No1 is injured at the moment, and I’ve been ready for this all the time. Now is my opportunity, so I will show what I can. It’s still possible to qualify for the Champions League but we have to look at ourselves, we need to make sure we play well and win games and then we’ll see what can happen. Today’s going to be hard. We know Burnley are going to give everything. We’ve seen the big teams here struggle. It’s hard but I’m 100% sure that if we play our own game, with the confidence we have, then were can win.
And then came Burnley’s David Jones:
We’ll just be focused on our job and getting the performance right and hopefully that’ll get us points. We’ve got to treat each game the same. We’re in a decent position to be able to get out of this fight at the bottom of the table. We beat Manchester City recently and we’ll be looking today to replicate and even improve on that performance.
Jan Vertonghen is absent from the Spurs squad because of illness. Michel Vorm makes his first Premier League start for the club. Burnley are unchanged, but have Fredrik Ulvestad, the Norwegian international midfielder who signed for the club last month, in their matchday squad for the first time.
Those teams in full, with substitutes and stuff. Harry Kane captains Spurs:
Burnley: Heaton, Trippier, Shackell, Duff, Mee, Boyd, Arfield, Jones, Ings, Barnes, Vokes. Subs: Kightly, Sordell, Jutkiewicz, Ulvestad, Gilks, Ward, Keane.
Tottenham Hotspur: Vorm, Walker, Dier, Chiriches, Rose, Mason, Bentaleb, Eriksen, Paulinho, Chadli, Kane. Subs: Soldado, Lamela, Townsend, Dembele, Friedel, Stambouli, Davies.
Referee: Martin Atkinson
The teams!
According to the relevant Twitter types, today’s starting line-ups will be as follows:
Confirmed #BFC starting XI: Heaton; Trippier, Duff, Shackell (c), Mee; Boyd, Jones, Arfield, Barnes; Ings, Vokes. #ClaretsLIVE
— Burnley FC (@BurnleyOfficial) April 5, 2015
#THFC team: Vorm, Walker, Chiriches, Dier, Rose; Bentaleb, Mason; Chadli, Eriksen, Paulinho; Kane (c) #COYS
— Tottenham Hotspur (@SpursOfficial) April 5, 2015
We will have the team news shortly. In the meantime, read Alan Smith’s interview with Nacer Chadli:
Nacer Chadli takes a deep breath and for a fleeting moment stares vacantly into the distance. The Tottenham Hotspur and Belgium midfielder is discussing his father’s passing in January when he pauses to consider how difficult it was to return to football after the funeral in Morocco. It hit him hard but when his performance levels, after an impressive start to the season, dropped ever so slightly during that period of mourning there was no shortage of criticism.
A sign of the times and the overburdening level of expectancy bestowed on players, perhaps, but Chadli continued to battle. The 25-year-old’s steely resolve shone through. Jibes from pundits after a stray pass here or a mistimed tackle there were not going to derail him.
“It was difficult going back for the funeral but important to be with my family during that time,” Chadli says. “I needed to be there to support them and I needed them to support me through it. But after a few days I was ready to go back. When you’re mourning, I think it’s important to focus on doing something that you love to help you and to get me through it I had football.”
Spurs wore black armbands in the first leg of the Capital One Cup semi-final against Sheffield United as a mark of respect. “I was touched by how the club and my team-mates dealt with it,” Chadli says. “They were excellent during a difficult period and it was very welcome by my family.”
