By TheLongside.co.uk 

What a roller coaster of a month August has been. The month has seen us top of the league (twice), unbeaten on the road, but putting in shocking performances against Wolves at the Turf and crashing out of the cup at the hands of League Two side Hartlepool.

No sooner were we into August than the season was underway, the 5th to be precise. We had come through pre-season unbeaten, and the first game for a lot of Burnley fans was the first opportunity to take a look at the new lads from Crewe, and what an impact one of them made. After a tedious first half at home to QPR, Steve Jones grabbed a brace on his debut and shot the Clarets to the top of the table, Burnley overcoming QPR by two goals to nil.

More good news in the opinion of many a Burnley fan came a few days later with the news that Micah Hyde was to be taken off the transfer list, which seemed to be welcomed by the majority, and according to Cotterill, Micah was more than pleased with the news too.

Next we were off to Leicester and a fantastic performance saw another victory as a superb Andy Gray header claimed all three points. Despite the win though, Crystal Palace’s superior goal difference saw us lose top spot (gits), and the “We are top of the league” chant as we left the Walkers Stadium was, well, not entirely true.

Happy days though early in the month, and the excitement surrounding the club was going into overdrive with even the ‘P’ word doing the rounds! We lost our 100% record at Hillsborough, but not to worry, the unbeaten run was still in tact and although the performance wasn’t as good as at the Walkers, we did OK and again, we were back on top of the league table.

Mid August saw the departures of Danny Karbassiyoon and Duane Courtney, who both to be honest had very little impact during there time at Burnley, with Karbassiyoon making just six substitute appearances and Courney as well making six sub appearances, although he did play the full ninety minutes in that very special day at Luton. Here’s to hoping they are both fixed up with clubs in the near future.

August has been a very good month for Kyle Lafferty, and the 16^th August 2006 will go down as a very special date in the Lafferty household as Kyle grabbed his first goal for his country as Northern Ireland beat Finland 2-1 in Helsinki (see here). Ironically it was Steve Jones that crossed for Lafferty, and Michael Duff also appeared as the Clarets trio helped Northern Ireland to a good win.

All well and good so far, but we were brought back down to earth as the Clarets put in an awful performance at home to Wolves on the 19th, and if that wasn’t bad enough the following Tuesday saw us go out of the Carling Cup to Hartlepool. Why do we do this? How can we be so good at Leicester and then put in a performance like we did against Hartlepool?

Not many people expected us to get anything out of the game at Crystal Palace this weekend, but this is Burnley Football Club, the club that never ceases to amaze us, and after leading twice we got a good point down there, with Kyle getting his first of the season to put us two one up.

He’ll certainly be happy with August, Kyle’s started four of our first six games, and appeared as a substitute in the other two, he’s notched up his first goal of the season, and of course got his first international goal. He has only just turned 19 and at the moment he is more than knocking on the starting eleven door, but with bids of £2m from Middlesbrough doing the round, let’s just hope we can keep hold of our young starlet.*

We are currently sitting in 7^th place, but this could change this afternoon as Sunderland host West Brom, with Roy Keane expected to sign the contract to become manager after the game. If Sunderland beat West Brom today, the Clarets will occupy a play-off position. You may just find a few Clarets will be cheering on the Mackems today.

The football is all but over for the Clarets as far as August goes, but transfer activity hopefully won’t be, but with just three days of the window left, it is looking increasingly unlikely that anybody will be coming in. Cotterill though has surprised us on transfer deadline day before and any additions would be more than welcome. Despite the good start to the season, we are severely lacking in certain departments, especially on the flanks.

September gives us the chance to get a real points haul, with three homes games, two of which are against two of the promoted sides, an away game at Stoke, who have hardly set the Championship alight so far, and a home game with Southampton, which could prove to be a very tricky fixture. Eight points in September is a real possibility, which should see us keep up with the play-off places. Let’s just hope it goes according to plan.

* - Note: Article may contain traces of extreme sarcasm.