Dyche delighted as Burnley move closer to safety
FOR all the stumbles, trips and face-plants of their season, Burnley have a bit of swagger about them at last.
And finally a bit of workplace security, too.
It would take an awful capitulation at this stage to give away their Premier League berth, with eight points separating them from 18th-place Cardiff.
They won’t say they are safe, but they should be, even if Cardiff do have a game in hand and a crack at Burnley next Saturday.
Those considerations will be drummed into the squad by Sean Dyche over and again in the coming week, but it is devilishly hard to see it all going south from here, even if the sheer weirdness of Burnley’s season is proof that nothing can be taken for granted.
This is a team that managed 12 points from its first 19 games but since St Stephen’s Day has taken 24 from 14, including a run of four straight losses. Go compare and go figure. This match, to some extent, encapsulated the down-andup madness of it all. They trailed inside four minutes to an Ashley Barnes own goal that was rooted in poor defending, and then they battered Bournemouth for three, with strikes from Chris Wood, Ashley Westwood and Barnes.
Quite aside from crushing a side with a good home record, Burnley did it with one of their best performances of the season.
Dyche said: ‘When you’re 1-0 down early in the game then yes, it’s up there with our best performance. I think the calmness was key today and I was really pleased with that.
‘We’ve done that better since Christmas. We have 24 points in 14 games and that’s a fantastic return. With performances like that you can see why we’ve got that return.’
Newcastle suddenly find themselves below Burnley and looking over their shoulders nervously after they were beaten at home by Crystal Palace yesterday. The Magpies have a sevenpoint buffer but must still face a couple of relegation rivals and Liverpool.
A penalty won by Wilfried Zaha and converted by Luka Milivojevic was enough to win Palace the points.
Newcastle boss Rafa Benitez said: ‘We did enough to deserve three points. We controlled them. But we made a mistake and paid for that. We knew how dangerous Zaha can be, we were watching the clips of him all week.’
Leicester are now seventh after adding to relegated Huddersfield misery with a 4-1 win in Yorkshire. Two goals from Jamie Vardy and one apiece for Youri Tielemans and James Maddison, with Aaron Mooy’s penalty in reply, reflected the varying fortunes.
His goals took Vardy past another great Foxes striker, Gary Lineker in the Leicester all-time scoring charts. The battle for seventh – or best of the rest – should go down to the wire.