It’s a day that long-suffering Burnley fans have awaited for months. It’s also a day that Burnley fans who became Burnley fans last summer as a content stunt, having chosen Burnley because it seemed to be the most irrelevant-while-also-blue-collar club in the EPL, have awaited for months.
Burnley is back in action.
And it might be ugly.
It was confirmed in recent days that Ashley Barnes, Chris Wood, and Johann Berg Gudmundsson are not making the trip down to Manchester. Or at least, they’re not playing. The realization that all three of these names are recognizable to even fans whose greatest extent of following the Clarets is refreshing the team’s Twitter account during matches was the first bad sign. The second was looking at Burnley’s goal-scorers on the year and realizing that Barnes and Wood have accounted for half the team’s output. Combine this with the fact that we’re pretty sure here at The Barking Crow that Man City is still good, even though they’re reckless cheaters (or perhaps because they’re reckless cheaters), and—as was said—it might be ugly.
Thankfully, we didn’t look at the table before this morning, and now that we’ve looked at it, we see that Bertie’s Boys and Man Shitty are the last two teams to play their 30th match. In other words, can’t lose ground in the standings. With nine matches to go, including today’s, Burnley’s in the eleventh position, seven points back of Wolverhampton for what we’re pretty sure is the Europa League spot, if the Europa League is still going to happen next year. (If you follow soccer more than us—which is to say, if you follow soccer—please let us know what’s been said about the Champions League and the Europa League. We aren’t googling it until Burnley’s within striking distance.)
Keys to the game? Park the bus. That’s what they say, right? That’s the stalling thing? Do that. Keep it to a two-nil loss or something of that sort. Nothing embarrassing. There’s your expert recommendation from a farcical college basketball blogger who hasn’t watched a soccer game since 2018.
