Match Preview: Burnley v Brighton
Nearly a calendar year after the 2019-20 Premier League season started, we find ourselves writing the final match preview of the campaign as Brighton travel to Burnley.
From the outside, it looks like neither side have anything to play. Both have secured their primary aim of avoiding relegation for another year; for the Albion this final game merely decides if they finish 15th or 16th; for Burnley, it is the difference between eighth and 10th.
There is a little more to it than that though. Victory for either team will ensure that they beat their previous best Premier League points tally while Clarets goalkeeper Nick Pope knows that a clean sheet guarantees him the Golden Glove award for most shutouts this season.
With those factors to consider, we will have everything crossed that there is a little more entertainment on show than in Brighton’s 0-0 draw with Newcastle on Monday night. Otherwise, my missus might expect me to share an opinion on new blinds and curtains – and nobody wants that.
A brief history of Burnley
Burnley were one of the founding members of the Football League, enjoying their heyday in the 1960s when they were crowned English champions once, finished runners up in an FA Cup and reached the quarter finals of the European Cup.
By the time the 1980s rolled around, a serious decline had set in at Turf Moor and by 1987 they found themselves staring extinction in the face.
Defeat on the final day of the season to Leyton Orient would have sent them tumbling into non league football. The Clarets duly got the result they needed, Lincoln City lost and so it was the Imps who slipped out of the professional ranks.
Burnley’s rise from those dark days has been remarkable. While Plucky Little Bournemouth and even our own climb from near-oblivion to the top flight have been described as fairy tales, those turnarounds have been financed by rich benefactors in Maxim Denim and Tony Bloom.
The Clarets have reached the top flight without racking up millions of losses. Not only that, but they have finished in the top 10 twice in three seasons now and even had a foray into the Europa League.
If any club’s rags-to-riches story deserves to be ranked alongside Cinderella and Aladdin as a fairy tale, then it is Burnley. And yet we hardly hear of it in such terms.
Burnley this season
As noted earlier in our match preview, both Brighton and Burnley could set new record points hauls which shows what an excellent season the Clarets have been treated to once again.
They had one brief flirtation with the relegation battle in mid-January when they dropped to within three points of the bottom three. That acted as a wake-up call and since then, Sean Dyche’s side have lost to just Manchester City and became the only team to leave Liverpool with a point when drawing 1-1 at Anfield.
There are concerns around Turf Moor that trouble may be brewing, however. Dyche is said to feel that his achievements are deserving of an increased transfer budget while the Burnley board continue to run one of the tightest ships in the top flight.
Will Dyche walk? It seems more possible now than at any stage in his seven year spell with Burnley, especially as his work in establishing the Clarets as a top 10 club are among the most impressive feats in the Premier League. A bigger club will surely take a punt on him before long.
Brighton’s head-to-head record with Burnley
Matches between Brighton and Burnley only became a regular occurrence at the turn of the century, since when we have played each other on an increasingly frequent basis across the top two divisions.
The draw is the most common result with 13 stalemates from 34 matches. Burnley have won 11 and Brighton 10, although none of those Albion wins have come in the Premier League.
In fact, you have to go back nine matches to August 2013 to find the last time we beat Burnley, a 2-0 win with Leonardo Ulloa and Andrew Crofts scoring to give Oscar Garcia his first home victory as Brighton boss.
Brighton’s head-to-head record with Burnley
Last six meetings
• Brighton 1-1 Brighton (Premier League, 14/09/19)
• Brighton 1-3 Burnley (Premier League, 09/02/19)
• Burnley 1-0 Brighton (Premier League, 08/12/18)
• Burnley 0-0 Brighton (Premier League, 28/04/18)
• Brighton 0-0 Burnley (Premier League, 16/12/17)
• Brighton 2-2 Burnley (Championship, 06/04/16)
The Albion really should have ended their barren run against Burnley when we last met back in September. Brighton dominated the game but only had Neal Maupay’s strike to show for their efforts as proceedings ticked into stoppage time.
The Seagulls then chose a terrible time to go to sleep, allowing the Clarets to walk the ball from their own goal up to the other end where Jeff Hendrick struck to make it 1-1.
A good Brighton performance ruined by missed chances and sloppy defending – it was Graham Potter’s first few months at the helm in a nutshell.
Team news
Jose Izquierdo and Steve Alzate remain the only two players unavailable to Potter for the trip to Turf Moor. There is every chance that it could be Glenn Murray’s last appearance in an Albion shirt given his criminal lack of game time this season, so we will be praying that Potter gives him the chance to say goodbye with a 112th goal in the stripes.
If the Brighton boss is feeling generous, he might also afford Shane Duffy a start as he seems certain to be sold for similar reasons to Murray.
Both have been excellent servants and deserve a proper send off, or as proper a send off as is possible without any supporters present. Nobody would begrudge the duo one final appearance, although knowing Potter he will probably play Murray as a left winger and Duffy in goal.
We gave up trying to guess Brighton team selections in these match previews long ago, so there seems little point in starting again for the final game of the season at Burnley.
Burnley’s key players
We have already mentioned Burnley goalkeeper Pope at the top of this match preview and he really should be England number one yet barely gets a sniff, presumably for the same reasons that Brighton captain Lewis Dunk hasn’t received a call up all year – big club bias.
Likewise Ben Mee and James Tarkowski in front of Pope, both of whom are English and both of whom have helped Pope record more clean sheets than any other goalkeeper in the Premier League this season.
Up front, Burnley’s striking options need no introduction. Number niiiiiiiinnnneeeeeeee Ashley Barnes spent nearly five years at the Amex earlier in his career.
Chris Wood hit double figures in a Brighton shirt as a teenage striker on-loan from West Bromwich Albion in the League One title winning season of 2010-11 under Gus Poyet You Know Who.
A good WeAreBrighton.com memory of Burnley away
Craig Mackail-Smith scoring an overhead kick. That is all you need to hear.
A bad WeAreBrighton.com memory of Burnley away
You may not have heard, but some of the people of Burnley can be quite ghastly. Three months after Gaetan Bong reported Jay Rodriguez for what Bong thought was racial abuse when Brighton played West Bromwich Albion, Burnley fans spent the entire game booing the left back.
They also spent most of the afternoon dishing out homophobic abuse to the away end. One member of the WAB Team was charmingly called “a ****ing faggot” despite being with his partner, who happens to be a woman. Work that one out.
Not only are a proportion of the locals racists – remember the White Lives Matter banner they paid to fly over the Etihad Stadium – and have a problem with homosexuality, but they are also pretty thick as they do not seemingly understand the difference between “not guilty” and “lack of evidence”.
Rodriguez was never cleared of the charges of racism against him – there just wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute. Seemingly, how the law works isn’t something that the people of Burnley are taught when growing up in-between those shifts as chimney sweeps and candle makers.
That afternoon at Turf Moor was like an away game in the 19th century, a pretty soul destroying experience all round. The football didn’t help either as the sides played out a dull 0-0.
Our favourite player to play for Brighton and Burnley
Wood and Barnes always get a mention in a Burnley versus Brighton match preview at this point, so to mix things up we are rolling back to the 1990s to nominate Kurt Nogan.
The Welsh striker was brilliant for Brighton and his strike rate of 60 goals in 120 games is up there with the very best. What made Nogan so appealing though was the fact that he didn’t really seem to care; scoring goals to him was an inconvenient task that got in the way of heading to Labrokes at Seven Dials to stick fifty quid on the 2.10 at Wolverhampton or downing pints and chatting up women in The Event.
He was a maverick and he continued in that manner once he moved to Turf Moor, ending his spell with Burnley by forcing through a a transfer to none other than the Claret’s hated rivals, Preston North End. As you do.
What do we like about Burnley
Now you might be forgiven for thinking that we detest Burnley having read our views on the 2017-18 season trip to Turf Moor. Believe it or not, but it is actually quite a nice place.
It’s a quaint little northern town, the pubs are good and most importantly of all, beer is cheap. If you could just fill it with sensible people who didn’t join White Lives Matters campaigns or think that gay people should be castrated, then it would be one of the best away days in the Premier League.
Tony Blair’s former spin doctor Alastair Campbell is also a Burnley fan and we will always have a soft spot for him given that he is the man upon whom Malcolm Tucker from The Thick Of It is based.
Prediction
We will sign off our final match preview for 2019-20 with a predictable prediction – Burnley 0-0 Brighton, but with a lot more entertainment than the Newcastle game.
