Barnes’ late strike pushes Burnley into top-four spot
The incredible story that is developing at Burnley gathered more pace here as Ashley Barnes’s 89th-minute winning goal propelled the club to fourth in the Premier League. When considerations are made next May for the manager of the year, it may prove difficult to look beyond the claim currently being pressed by Sean Dyche.
Burnley and Dyche are keeping exalted company indeed now. This 1-0 victory over struggling Stoke – their sixth in their last eight outings – thrust them into the final Champions League place. It has been 43 years since the Clarets finished sixth in the top flight.
Little old Burnley. A local enterprise, bound by financial constraints, that Dyche has elevated from the Championship to compete
in an ocean filled with multinationals. There has been none of the flagrant spending of others. The match-winning goal, a superlative effort that powered beyond Jack Butland in the blink of an eye, was delivered by a player who cost £500,000 from Brighton three years ago.
Unlike some, Dyche did not inherit a squad sprinkled with star performers. He has laid the foundations and all the more remarkably renewed them when some of his most productive players – Danny Ings, Kieran Trippier and Michael Keane – have been prised away by richer suitors.
“I thought we gave a different kind of terrific performance tonight. We’ve had to grind,” Dyche said. “The challenge for me yearon-year at this club is to keep it moving forward. Every year we’ve been trying to layer it on, off the pitch and on it, and we’re doing that. The league doesn’t lie in one way. It’s unpredictable where we are just because of how good the
other teams are. Not because we aren’t a good team but, on the other hand, we’ve earned the right to be where we are.
“We’ve worked very hard here to create a lot of new records from when I first got here to where we are now but they are markers in time. They are not markers of all the little details you don’t see. There’s a lot of work, not just from me but my staff and the players through this club and I’ve been proud of all of that.”
Until Barnes’s late goal that involved some fine play from Jack Cork and was described by Dyche as “absolutely top drawer”, it had been an evening when the Arctic blast had threatened to dampen the offensive spark of both teams.
Stoke, to their credit, had belied their lowly league position and, with Xherdan Shaqiri playing a particularly prominent role, made a promising start. The awkwardness of Peter Crouch’s gangly frame also proved troublesome for the hosts.
Approaching his 37th year the former England striker remains a useful conduit on occasions such as this. Twice he almost profited from crosses caught up in the gale swirling across Turf Moor.
And while the second period was largely inconsequential fare, the 84th-minute withdrawal of Shaqiri