Opposition View: Burnley

It’s probably too early to call Brighton v Burnley a six pointer, but it certainly feels like a pivotal game for the Albion.

We may be playing football that is enjoyable to watch, but fail to win against the Clarets and it will be a maximum of two points from home games against West Ham United, Southampton and then Burnley. That’s a set of results that will cause a little alarm.

Ominously for Graham Potter, Burnley are getting their mojo back. After last season’s brush with relegation, they’re becoming hard to beat again with all those qualities that you associate with a Sean Dyche side coming to the fore.

Ahead of their visit to the Amex, Tony Scholes from Up the Clarets to find out his hopes for Burnley this season. And we couldn’t not mention the Premier League’s in-form striker either, a certain number niiiinnneeee…

From the outside looking in, it’s difficult to work Burnley out. Best of the rest in 2017-18 and then embroiled in the relegation battle for large periods last season. Where do you see Burnley sitting in the grand scheme of the Premier League this year?
The 2017/18 season was exceptional but things went against us last season. We had the Europa League commitments with trips to Turkey and Greece, both coming just ahead of long away trips.

We’d heard from other clubs how badly it affected their league seasons but probably dismissed it at the time. It did cost us though and with an injury list that was at times leaving us struggling to fill the bench, it proved to be a recipe for disaster.

Eventually we recovered, even if we didn’t get all the injured players back, and the second half of the season was every bit as good as we’d enjoyed in the previous season.

Where do we sit now? For start, we aren’t going to be challenging the top six any time soon but I don’t think we’ll be in that dog fight at the bottom this season. We’ve lost two out of the four we’ve played, both against top six clubs, but beat Southampton and should have won at Wolves but for a soft penalty scored in the 97th minute. Things are certainly looking better than they were a year ago.

Talking about your games so far, have you made of Burnley’s start to the season?
Of the three games we’ve played, only Liverpool would have come off the pitch thinking they fully deserved to get a result. Even then, they took the lead with a fluke and then we gifted them a second.

This, so far, has been the Burnley in the Sean Dyche era that we all know and love. We are going to be difficult to beat again. We’ll have our disappointing days, that’s for sure, but I think the start has given us some real promise.

It seemed to be a relatively quiet transfer window bar Jay Rodriguez’s move from West Bromwich Albion. Were you happy with Burnley’s work over the summer?
We needed to bring in players to replace Tom Heaton, Stephen Ward and Sam Vokes, who himself was replaced last January by Peter Crouch. We’ve done that and then brought in Danny Drinkwater on loan. He’s not featured in the league as yet and won’t for a while now I wouldn’t have thought given his shenanigans in a Manchester night club.

You always want more in a transfer window, but at Burnley we are always left wanting when it comes to bringing in players.

We can’t pass up the opportunity to talk about Ashley Barnes, who seems to have turned into a goal machine over the summer (and will undoubtedly be scoring at the Amex on Saturday). What’s been the secret to his barnstorming form so far?
Ashley Barnes was probably very much the marmite player at Brighton. We signed him when we were desperate for cover for Danny Ings and Sam Vokes, when we were winning promotion with only two strikers.

He looked decent enough at the time but here’s a player who has improved and improved season on season and now looks more than a Premier League striker. He’s loved by the Burnley fans and that’s no surprise and so far this season he’s building up his own collection of goal of the season contenders.

I don’t know whether he will score this weekend or not but there are a lot more Premier League goals to come from Barnes, of that there is no doubt.

Burnley triumphed in both out meetings last year. Brighton were shocking at Turf Moor and then Tom Heaton gave one of the best displays of individual goalkeeper we’ve ever seen in the return. What did you think of those two fixtures?
The first one, at home, came at a time when we were at our lowest. One point from the previous seven games had seen us down at the bottom. We didn’t need to play well at that time, we just needed to get a result. Happen as well we did too, we lost the next three.

By the time we arrived at Brighton, we were looking a much better side. Things had started to improve dramatically for us and I think everyone there that day saw it. Heaton did play well; he won the man of the match vote on the Up the Clarets website comfortably, but it was a good team performance with Chris Wood, another former Brighton striker, scoring twice and having another good game.

If you had to give Graham Potter some advice to beating Burnley on Saturday, what would it be?
I’m sure he’ll have his own ideas on how to play against us so I probably shouldn’t be trying to help him, but they will have to compete with us and by that I mean they will be playing against the fittest and hardest working team in the league.

Who do you think is going to win the league this season and who can you see being relegated?
It’s surely between the top two isn’t it? I don’t see any other side anywhere near them. I think it will probably be the same as last season with Manchester City winning it and Liverpool coming second.

Finally, a prediction as to how you think things will pan out at the Amex. And the final score?
We have one point from our two away games at Arsenal and Wolves when the performances have deserved, I would say, probably four points. I think we’ll get that first win this Saturday. It might be tight so I’ll go for 1-0 with a former Brighton player scoring the goal.

Thanks to Tony for taking the time to speak to us. Hopefully his prediction doesn’t turn out to be correct, although it’s hard to escape the conclusion that either Barnes or Wood will be scoring against us. You can follow Up the Clarets on Twitter for when it does happen.