One of the more remarkable records Burnley kept last season was their refusal to concede more than once in a single league game.
Sign up to our daily Burnley Express Today newsletter
Sign up
Thank you for signing up!
Did you know with an ad-lite subscription to Burnley Express, you get 70% fewer ads while viewing the news that matters to you.
Submitting...
Within 90 minutes of being back in the Premier League, the Clarets were given a brutal reminder – as if they needed one – of the harsh realities of the top flight, shipping three to Tottenham in their season opener and with two of them coming within just six minutes of each other.
That was the pivotal moment in the game, there’s no doubt about it. For the first hour, Scott Parker’s side had been more than a match for last season’s Europa League winners.
They could consider themselves unfortunate to be behind and, having grown back into the game after a startled start, were looking the more likely to grab the game’s next goal.
They should have done too. They created two golden opportunities, the first for Hannibal, the second for Jaidon Anthony. Both went begging. You simply can’t afford to be missing opportunities of that quality at this level.
Six minutes later, the visitors were three down and staring down the barrel of a heavy opening day defeat – and their first in the league in 287 days – having done very little, if anything, wrong.
Positives
Scott Parker will have mixed emotions. There will be no part of him that enjoyed losing a game 3-0, but he’ll have been hugely encouraged by a lot of what he witnessed.
The opening 10 minutes or so was a tough watch though, it has to be said. In fact, the first 30 seconds will have prompted many travelling Burnley fans to watch through their fingers, such was the ferocity in which Spurs came out of the blocks.
It was frustrating then that, just as Burnley looked to be settling into the game, they conceded a real sloppy goal after just 10 minutes.
It wasn’t a mistake as such, but Maxime Esteve should have done better with a wayward clearance that went straight to Mohammed Kudus, only inviting pressure in the final third. The former West Ham man swung in a dangerous cross and Richarlison swiftly moved free of Hjalmar Ekdal to steer home a first-time effort.
At this point the Clarets could easily have gone under, but they responded well and for the remainder of the half they were the better side.
This wasn’t simply a case of sitting back against a better side and hoping for an opening to emerge, the Clarets had a plan and stuck to it. They were pressing well and crucially at the right times, they were a constant threat on the transition and they were posing all the right questions from set-pieces and long throws.
As predicted beforehand, Burnley were making a right nuisance of themselves. They refused to simply roll over. They were more than a match for their Champions League opponents, producing 14 shots on goal to Tottenham’s 16.
Key moments
This remained the case until that pivotal five or six-minute period in the second-half that essentially decided the outcome of the game.
Hannibal dallied over the ball for all of a split-second, but at this level that’s the sort of delay that will see a Micky van de Ven swoop in and deny you. Anthony was then denied by Vicario from all of six yards out, as panic set in among the Spurs backline.
But within the blink of an eye, Parker’s side found themselves two down as Richarlison expertly and acrobatically completed his brace. It was utterly ruthless stuff.
To sum up the Premier League in one neat metaphor, the ball was in the centre circle one moment as I momentarily took my eyes away from my laptop. The next time I looked up, the ball was in the back of Martin Dubravka’s net as Brennan Johnson beat the onrushing keeper with a tidy chipped finish. And that was that.
Having come so close to making it 1-1 and setting up a more-than-interesting finish, Burnley were dead and buried.
Blueprint
It sounds like a bizarre assertion to make after suffering a 3-0 defeat, but what Saturday proved is that Burnley have the right blueprint for success. They just came out on the wrong side in all of the decisive, key moments in the game and that can happen when you’re facing such a top side. You suspect it won’t be the last time it happens this season.
The question mark, of course, is whether the Clarets have the required quality to take full advantage of such a promising performance and take these aforementioned opportunities when they continue to come. But we’re only one game in.
It might still not be enough for survival, but Burnley approached this game a lot more pragmatically and sensibly than what we witnessed two years ago at the start of their last relegation campaign. That will stand them in good stead.
To survive, Burnley need to be hard to beat. They need to know how and when to slow the game down, be more street-smart, be difficult to break down and take better advantage of set-pieces. This was all on show at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Saturday.
The blueprint is there, they just need to execute it.