TURF MOOR — As you walk into the concourse in the upper tier in the James Hargreaves stand at Turf Moor, there is a small white sign that faces you. It offers a direction, with an arrow: “Early exit turnstile”. As one Burnley supporter walks in at half-time, his team two goals and one man ahead, he turns to his mate and jokes: “We might not need that this week – this lot are shite”.
That dark humour has littered the previous 45 minutes. When Burnley supporters point out that Sheffield United must be awful because they are winning at home, the away end responds with a similar jibe because it’s only 1-0. It’s not only 1-0 for long. For those who have crossed the Pennines, a must-win game is lost after 29 minutes.
Easily the best way to approach Turf Moor is to get onto Yorkshire Street as quickly as possible, before the railway bridge that frames both the floodlights that rise to the sides of the Bob Lord Stand and the Royal Dyche pub, now a slightly painful reminder of what once was.
Along the route, businesses make the most of their geography: Turf More off licence, The Turf, Ruby and Claret. Next to the Royal Dyche, the Vintage Claret pub has a placard attached to inform of a change of name to “Vincent Claret”, but this time it feels a little more temporary. Perhaps they have learned their lesson. Sean Dyche is busy trying to relegate Burnley now.
This ground possesses the best view in English league football, although others will disagree. What is inarguable is that I have arrived on the best possible day to show it off. The incline of the hill behind the Bob Lord Stand, a single tier structure designed as if to incorporate the beauty beyond as part of the stadium, is simply perfect: each roof of each building in tight, terraced, covered in heavy frost in mid-afternoon, simply flows into another like an icy Escher staircase.
It blocks out any view of windows, pavements or people, thus creating two separate impressions: winter serenity and that everyone who lives within the buildings has come to the match. The hills beyond, the church steeple, the factory chimney, the old cotton mill; all of it has a deep sense of permanence, a living monument to Lowry’s England.
For most of the afternoon it sits out of vision, the low winter sun blinding. Those in the stands cover their brows with their dominant hand, as if saluting the glory of the vista.
I last came here 15 months ago, on a balmy late August evening when the sun barely fell to sleep before full-time. Then, Burnley supporters were learning to love Vincent Kompany after some early-season stutters. This was a new age for an old club: possession football, nippy forwards and goals for fun. Six weeks later, Burnley went top of the Championship and never looked back.
Now I’m here, with a touch of associated guilt, for some rubbernecking. Burnley have equalled an English league record by losing their first seven home games of a league season and could break it today. The only consolation lies in the identity of their visitors – Sheffield United have taken one point from their six away games.
Less than eight months ago, these two teams met in Burnley, galloping clear of the pack on their way to 192 combined points and extraordinarily comfortable promotion campaigns. Now only Everton’s 10-point deduction separates them from being together again. No matter – Burnley and Sheffield United’s fate still appears intertwined. They have conceded 66 goals in 26 league games and lost 21 of them before today.
How quickly belief dissipates, warped into hopelessness by forlorn experience. Speaking to supporters in the midweek before the game is hardly much more fun, a sea of pessimism predicting their team to lose in a myriad of frustrating methods. Matchday is supposed to bring with it excitement but now there’s only dread. You might play eight fewer matches in the Premier League, but it’s already beginning to feel like the longest season.
Both managers and both sets of players have tried to keep chins up. This week alone there has been talk of effort you cannot fault, performances you cannot question and ill-deserved punishment. It all sounds a little futile, like shouting for help in a hurricane. Instead, a simple truth: both of these clubs are trying to play the same way as last season with concerningly lesser returns.
It takes 15 seconds for Burnley to score and an away end to reason that if you didn’t laugh while screaming obscenities internally, you’d cry. In that time, a quarter of a minute, they manage to lose two 50-50 challenges, fail to block a cross and allow Jay Rodriguez to find space to score a header. Gutsy challenges, crosses and headed goals; it’s like Dyche never really left.
It gets better for Burnley, or at least Paul Heckingbottom’s side make it nonsensically worse for themselves. Jacob Bruun Larsen’s starts have been limited to the EFL Cup before now, but a simple ball over the top somehow allows him to run through on goal and his shot barely needs power nor disguise to beat Wes Foderingham.
Oli McBurnie then takes brainlessness to a whole new level, elbowing two Burnley players in nine minutes. Both could have been red cards; two yellows have the same effect. Given that Sheffield United have scored more than once in one of their previous 36 Premier League away games, it takes an optimist or a fool to believe in anything other than further gloom.
By now, the away end has given up on anything other than righteous anger. The most common gesture, performed whenever another simple action ends in failure, is almost unique to football, the sweep forward of the arm into the air, as if swatting a fly or playing an imaginary straight drive at double speed. It says two words and only one of them is printable here.
Beating Wolves and drawing with Brighton before the international break gave Sheffield United a chance, but that is now quickly fading from view again. They have lost consecutive league matches to Bournemouth and Burnley and have been level for less than 12 minutes of those two matches combined.
What do you do, what can you do, other than keep trying and hope for a January miracle? “We’re going down, but so are you”, they sing. Bringing others into their bubble of misery is the only relief.
Promotion brought great joy to these supporters, but this is their second successive depressing Premier League season and the fun sure begins to wear off during cold away trips when you come back with nothing but a headache and bad mood.
There is a futility to an exercise for which the entire point is to offer escape. By the end, those that have stayed on only did so to offer a final, frank, “f**k”-filled assessment to those who they believe have let them down. These were heroes once and once wasn’t long ago.
For those in Turf Moor’s other three-and-a-half stands, relief of a far better kind. They have finally ended this miserable home streak and avoided the pathetic unwanted record. They spend 15 minutes failing to eliminate the groans, thanks to some even-slower-paced-than-usual buildup play, a refusal to shoot and the visitors having two clear cut chances with ten men and no confidence.
But Sheffield United cannot defend, so the lead is eventually extended and then floodgates open. Confidence becomes a tangible, real thing. You can see it in every pass and flick and overlapping run.
The salve will only be temporary, eventually giving way to questions they’re desperately trying to ignore around here. Burnley have won two league matches this season and both were fixtures that they also won last season. Does that mean they’re good enough for the Premier League, or simply too good for the Championship?
Those specific worries can wait a while. By now, lights are twinkling in the black night on the hill and those of a Lancashire disposition are agog at what they have witnessed. Burnley have kept a clean sheet for the first time this season. They have scored five goals in a top-flight game for the first time since 1970. “Can we play you every week?,” they wonder out loud. They’re desperately trying to avoid playing them next season.
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