As ITV Sport rolled into Burnley and Matt Smith began filming the introduction to ‘The Championship’ which would feature Burnley as the main game, the fans surrounding the cameras were full of smiles and there was a feeling of optimism about the season ahead after the first three games propelled the unbeaten Clarets into second in the table.  There was, however, a significantly different atmosphere following the final whistle.

Steve Cotterill’s men went into the game knowing that history was against them as they attempted to do something that had only happened once since 1970 - find a home win against Wolves.  The last time we sent them back home empty handed was in the 2002/03 season when Gareth Taylor and Dean West got the goals in a 2-1 win.  We did, of course, pick up a 1-0 win at Molineux last season, Garreth O’Connor’s fantastic free-kick being the difference between the teams that day.

Following the horrendous display against Preston last week, Mick McCarthy made the bold move of dropping five players from his starting line-up for the visit to the Turf, although one of those left out, Lee Naylor, was absent due to being in Scotland discussing terms with Celtic.

Rob Edwards took his place and he was joined in the starting eleven by Dan Jones, Seyi Olofinjana, who was making his first start in almost a year and Leon Clarke whilst new signing from our friends down the M65, Jemal Johnson, was handed his debut.

Burnley were forced into making their only change from the team that won a point at Hillsborough last week, with our newest international goalscorer Kyle Lafferty coming in to replace the suspended Andy Gray.

We were under constant pressure from the start, with Johnson and Clarke combining well in attack for the visitors.  Wolves were having most of the possession but not creating any chances but it was no surprise when they scored an early goal in just under 20 minutes.  We were looking sluggish and disinterested and when Frank Sinclair, Wayne Thomas and Michael Duff all failed to stop the a long ball reaching Jemal Johnson it was inevitable that the Rovers reject would open the scoring, leaving Brian Jensen with no chance.

It was a comical goal to concede, Thomas and Duff will take the majority of the blame after both seemed to go for the same ball, missed it and left Johnson with the simple task of taking advantage of our lack of pace at the back to sprint towards goal and send Brian Jensen diving in the complete wrong direction.

We carried on the first half as we began it, we were second to every ball and lost every tussle, although we did create two very good chances to equalise.  Chris McCann’s turn and shot from six yards was pretty lacklustre but Alan Mahon was unlucky not to have hit the top corner of Matt Murray’s goal with a powerful effort from the edge of the area. 

We did go in behind, however and with Clarets fans feeling heavily disappointed by the opening 45 minutes.  An improved performance for the second half would have made up for the disappointment of the first half and the lack of half time pies (maybe we should have had a word with the cringe-inducing ‘Stan the Hollands Pies Van Man’ for some more) but it was not to be.

Steve Cotterill made two changes eight minutes into the second half as the team came out as sluggish as before - James O’Connor came on for Micah Hyde, who gave a performance explaining why he was earlier placed on the transfer list, and Gifton Noel-Williams replaced the awful Wade Elliot. Both players made an improvement to the team but we remained second best.

Despite the changes Wolves came agonisingly close to doubling their lead, Dan Jones striking the woodwork from the almost perfect free kick and they again came close twice in the next few minutes and we were looking very shaky at the back.

The last few minutes saw the Clarets finally put the visitors under pressure but we didn’t really look like producing the goal we needed, O’Connor shot over, whilst Mahon’s cross nearly sneaked in at the far post but the Wolves defence stood strong and the final whistle signalled the end to one of our worst performances in a long time.

There can be no complaints about the result, Wolves fully deserved their win whilst Burnley fully deserved their defeat.  Many questions can be asked after the game following some poor individual performances which caused Steve Cotterill to lock the players in the dressing room after the game.

The one plus point was the performance of Kyle Lafferty who put his highly experienced (and paid) team-mates to shame with a performance full of passion and hunger - he must surely be in contention to keep his place in the team when Andy Gray returns on Tuesday.  It was a complete shock when he was not named man of the match, surely the announcer made some sort of mistake when he gave the award to Jon Harley.

And so Wolves continued their fantastic record at Turf Moor and exposed many problems in the Burnley team, who slipped down to seventh in the table, and Steve Cotterill will need to address ahead of the midweek cup game and the trip to table topping Crystal Palace next Saturday.

kevrobinson