25 goals conceded...

[scouseclaret]

...in 11 games this season. Last season, it took us until the last game of February to concede that many.

A shocking and inexplicable deterioration.

[Flat Stanley]

Mee been poor all season although played well today by all accounts. Tarks good most of season but poor last two games, playing with an injury all season and needs a break to get it sorted properly. Lowton poor most of the season but Bardsley starting ahead of him earlier on was not the answer. Taylor gradually improving but has taken time. Hart coming in may have upset the apple cart a bit. Gibson injured since arrival. Just a mess. Hopefully things will settle down. Midfield has offered little protection this season as well which to me is probably the biggest problem.

[Granny WeatherWax]

Do not come on here with your negative stats. You’ll be jumped upon and abused.

[taio]

...in 11 games this season. Last season, it took us until the last game of February to concede that many.

A shocking and inexplicable deterioration.

It's certainly a worry. Until we can start retaining the ball we will have a problem.

[Granny WeatherWax]

We didn’t retain the ball much last season......

[Claretforever]

I think we attacked sides more last season. Okay, today when we attacked we got punished, but that second half was far better than what we’ve served up recently, and if we show some intent then the opposition has to defend at times rather than camp in our half!

[MACCA]

To be fair it's not as many as Fulham

We are playing against teams who have spent millions of pounds assembling their squads.

We had our best season for many a decade last season, it doesn't matter if we Conceeded 4 a game for the next 10 games, we've come very far in the last 6 years alone, never mind the dark days of the 80's and 90's.

In Dyche We Trust

[HunterST_BFC]

Anyone else missing Arfield ?

[Bordeauxclaret]

Anyone else missing an organised defence?

[Joe14]

All the defences fault according to the masses. Hart on the other hand is suddenly a saint.

[HunterST_BFC]

We signed Hart with good reason apparently after a calf strain to Heaton - as Hart would not take another loan.
SD clearly decided signing Hart was better than turning to other fit in house options.
(I wish had kept faith with what he had available at the time... even a younster)

Heaton was fit - a minor calf injury - yet deemed fit enough to sit on the bench two weeks later.
If this isn't going to p iss off Heaton and our other keepers and probably other players..... it is?

Buggering around with team selections in the Europ' L' - didn't help either imho.
Popes' injury had a massive effect in some thinking...
Panic.
Truth is we shopped bargain basement all summer in other areas on the pitch. etc etc etc

SD was left short in all the areas everyone knew about. Keeper just being bad luck.
SD hasn't got many option to change it really.

We are Burnley I know but surely we should have got better deals done over the summer.

[scouseclaret]

To be fair it's not as many as Fulham

We are playing against teams who have spent millions of pounds assembling their squads.

We had our best season for many a decade last season, it doesn't matter if we Conceeded 4 a game for the next 10 games, we've come very far in the last 6 years alone, never mind the dark days of the 80's and 90's.

In Dyche We Trust

We’ve been playing against teams with billion-pound squads for most of the past five years without ever getting thumped - now all of a sudden we’re getting thumped on a regular basis. Not sure conceding less than Fulham makes it alright!

Don’t get me wrong, this is not any sort of anti-Dyche thread. I’m just genuinely bemused by it.

[HiroshimaClaret]

We signed Hart with good reason apparently after a calf strain to Heaton - as Hart would not take another loan.
SD clearly decided signing Hart was better than turning to other fit in house options.
(I wish had kept faith with what he had available at the time... even a younster)

Heaton was fit - a minor calf injury - yet deemed fit enough to sit on the bench two weeks later.
If this isn't going to p iss off Heaton and our other keepers and probably other players..... it is?

Buggering around with team selections in the Europ' L' - didn't help either imho.
Popes' injury had a massive effect in some thinking...
Panic.
Truth is we shopped bargain basement all summer in other areas on the pitch. etc etc etc

SD was left short in all the areas everyone knew about. Keeper just being bad luck.
SD hasn't got many option to change it really.

We are Burnley I know but surely we should have got better deals done over the summer.

Concur greatly but can`t with `SD was left short in all the areas`
I fear Dyche leaves himself short with his apparent need for a `certain type of player with the correct `ethic`.

[Granny WeatherWax]

Correct

[kaptin1]

Historically, when being attacked, we always played with a very narrow back four (covering the width of the penalty area) with the two wide midfielders dropping into the full back positions to effectively make it a back six. This, with two/three midfielders sitting in front, made us very hard to break down.

Now, it seems to me that the wide midfielders don’t do this to the same extent meaning the back four is more spread out thus creating more gaps and isolating our full backs. Yesterday, Taylor and Mee coped reasonably well with this, but Tarkowski and Lowton were constantly exposed and all over the place.

The other problem is a complete lack of confidence on the ball. Players invariable taking the easy option, either a square ball or a back pass, and when it does go forward it tends to be hopeful long balls rather than incisive passes. Defour adds quality in this respect, but he can’t do it all on his own.

We need to get back to basics and being hard to beat. A few clean sheets will build confidence and then we can progress from there.

Playing a consistent first eleven would also help, instead of the constant chopping and changing. Personally, I think we need to drop Lennon (who is probably better suited to being an impact sub when players are tiring) and bring in Brady. We also need to get an extra man in midfield until things stabilise, so bringing in Hendrick. I’d also go with Wood up front ... yes he can seem like a passenger for a lot of the game, but he is probably more likely to nick a goal than any other player we have and his confidence isn’t going to rebuild if he is sat on the bench.

[HiroshimaClaret]

Historically, when being attacked, we always played with a very narrow back four (covering the width of the penalty area) with the two wide midfielders dropping into the full back positions to effectively make it a back six. This, with two/three midfielders sitting in front, made us very hard to break down.

Now, it seems to me that the wide midfielders don’t do this to the same extent meaning the back four is more spread out thus creating more gaps and isolating our full backs. Yesterday, Taylor and Mee coped reasonably well with this, but Tarkowski and Lowton were constantly exposed and all over the place.

The other problem is a complete lack of confidence on the ball. Players invariable taking the easy option, either a square ball or a back pass, and when it does go forward it tends to be hopeful long balls rather than incisive passes. Defour adds quality in this respect, but he can’t do it all on his own.

We need to get back to basics and being hard to beat. A few clean sheets will build confidence and then we can progress from there.

Playing a consistent first eleven would also help, instead of the constant chopping and changing. Personally, I think we need to drop Lennon (who is probably better suited to being an impact sub when players are tiring) and bring in Brady. We also need to get an extra man in midfield until things stabilise, so bringing in Hendrick. I’d also go with Wood up front ... yes he can seem like a passenger for a lot of the game, but he is probably more likely to nick a goal than any other player we have and his confidence isn’t going to rebuild if he is sat on the bench.

Hard to argue with that. Defour with 1 or 2 others in the midfield?

[claretspice]

Historically, when being attacked, we always played with a very narrow back four (covering the width of the penalty area) with the two wide midfielders dropping into the full back positions to effectively make it a back six. This, with two/three midfielders sitting in front, made us very hard to break down.

Now, it seems to me that the wide midfielders don’t do this to the same extent meaning the back four is more spread out thus creating more gaps and isolating our full backs. Yesterday, Taylor and Mee coped reasonably well with this, but Tarkowski and Lowton were constantly exposed and all over the place.

The other problem is a complete lack of confidence on the ball. Players invariable taking the easy option, either a square ball or a back pass, and when it does go forward it tends to be hopeful long balls rather than incisive passes. Defour adds quality in this respect, but he can’t do it all on his own.

We need to get back to basics and being hard to beat. A few clean sheets will build confidence and then we can progress from there.

Playing a consistent first eleven would also help, instead of the constant chopping and changing. Personally, I think we need to drop Lennon (who is probably better suited to being an impact sub when players are tiring) and bring in Brady. We also need to get an extra man in midfield until things stabilise, so bringing in Hendrick. I’d also go with Wood up front ... yes he can seem like a passenger for a lot of the game, but he is probably more likely to nick a goal than any other player we have and his confidence isn’t going to rebuild if he is sat on the bench.

I'm not sure if I completely agree with the view that the wide midfielders are necessarily the problem. JBG and Lennon are both very diligent defensively (as is Brady when he plays), although I do think Lennon occasionally switches off (understandably; he's spent the majority of his career in successful teams who spend a lot less time defending) and I don't think any of them are as good tactically as Boyd and Arfield were - its not just a question of tracking back to double up with the full back, its knowing when to step in and supplement the central midfield too.

But there's no question there's a general problem with larger spaces between players defensively. I'd actually hold our central midfield responsible for this to a large extent - we don't look to me as coherent in there, and that's causing us problems with and without the ball. In the last 3 games, we've had Defour back - which I think was being seen as a panacea, but whilst in time he'll come good, at the minute he's still getting back to the pace of the Premier League and without the ball in particular that is being exposed.

To me, its a combination of factors - a bit of form, the odd injury, both of which have generally hit confidence, perhaps the distraction of Europe and a general come-down from the success of last season, plus a bit of a change in personnel, especially in midfield, which we haven't quite adapted to. I think the other big aspect is the lack of outballs and the ability to take the pressure of ourselves this season - whether due to pace in the channels, or quality on the ball, or players good at buying time with their back to goal (Arfield, Barnes).

The good news is that we seem fairly potent going forwards. I imagine this will be a tough week of hard graft on the training pitch, doing lots and lots of defensive drilling. The players and management will be hurting, we can guarantee that much.

[Burnley1989]

All the defences fault according to the masses. Hart on the other hand is suddenly a saint.

How many goals has Hart been at fault for?

[Mala591]

I agree that far too many gaps in central midfield is the most urgent problem at the moment. SD has:

Cork, Defour, Hendrick, Westwood and possibly McNeil and a solution might be to try three players in central midfield in a 4-1-4-1 lineup with a holding player in front of the back four e.g.

-----Cork
Defour Hendrick

----Westwood
Defour-----Cork

---Defour
Cork---McNeil

Personally I quite like the last option suggested.

Over to you claretspice for your comments.

[Colburn_Claret]

Its never one thing, always a combination of many things.

I can still remember Dyches first game, after conceding so many goals under Eddie Howe, and the thing that stood out from the very first minute, was that you could put a set square across the pitch and the back 4 were in a perfect line. The 4 across the middle when we lost the ball were in a perfect line also.
That morphed into the full backs pulling in narrower as we fell back and the wingers replacing them as the acting fullbacks. It worked because we were so organised at it, we left the opposition few options, no matter how much possession they had. We had players covering the shots to the inside of the post, giving them the free option of shooting straight at the keeper from outside the area.

Where has it gone wrong... all over the place. The back line is often caught out of shape, mainly because we give the ball away in the wrong area of the pitch. We knock the ball long and lose it in their half, we have time to set up the defence. When we fanny about with the ball along the back line and get caught, we are knackered. We all want to see possession football, and passing it along the back is part of that, but the lack of nous in our players to understand that there is a time to play the pass, and then there is a time to put it in row Z is amazing, especially at the level we are.

The second part is why are we getting caught in possession, and that lies in the fact we are so poor at showing for the ball. Our wide men tend to be static and therefore easily marked. The front man/men are similar static. If the opposition outnumber us in the middle we have no options going forward. You can see, especially watching the better teams, that players are never stood still, even if its just to move your marker around, and the best balls aren't played to the man, they are played into space for the man to run onto. We do have players that can play the pass, but not always the players to read the pass. That works the other way round as well because some of our players can't see the pass into space when it's on.

We have had glimpses over the last two seasons that we can "put it together", and when we do we look brilliant, but it is far too rare. Injuries and team changes haven't helped this season. Defensively we need to get back to basics, really back to basics. With Defour and Brady back and Hendrick and JBG we have players that can knock the ball around, but they need to stay fit, and play every minute until they start to play as a unit. Only then will we see if we have a team good enough to stay up.

[karatekid]

Makes me laugh when people talk about the poor transfer window and buying players from lower leagues then we pine over players like Boyd and Arfield.
We need progression not regression or stagnation. ( and no, they are not Italian players )

[claretspice]

Its never one thing, always a combination of many things.

I can still remember Dyches first game, after conceding so many goals under Eddie Howe, and the thing that stood out from the very first minute, was that you could put a set square across the pitch and the back 4 were in a perfect line. The 4 across the middle when we lost the ball were in a perfect line also.
That morphed into the full backs pulling in narrower as we fell back and the wingers replacing them as the acting fullbacks. It worked because we were so organised at it, we left the opposition few options, no matter how much possession they had. We had players covering the shots to the inside of the post, giving them the free option of shooting straight at the keeper from outside the area.

Where has it gone wrong... all over the place. The back line is often caught out of shape, mainly because we give the ball away in the wrong area of the pitch. We knock the ball long and lose it in their half, we have time to set up the defence. When we fanny about with the ball along the back line and get caught, we are knackered. We all want to see possession football, and passing it along the back is part of that, but the lack of nous in our players to understand that there is a time to play the pass, and then there is a time to put it in row Z is amazing, especially at the level we are.

The second part is why are we getting caught in possession, and that lies in the fact we are so poor at showing for the ball. Our wide men tend to be static and therefore easily marked. The front man/men are similar static. If the opposition outnumber us in the middle we have no options going forward. You can see, especially watching the better teams, that players are never stood still, even if its just to move your marker around, and the best balls aren't played to the man, they are played into space for the man to run onto. We do have players that can play the pass, but not always the players to read the pass. That works the other way round as well because some of our players can't see the pass into space when it's on.

We have had glimpses over the last two seasons that we can "put it together", and when we do we look brilliant, but it is far too rare. Injuries and team changes haven't helped this season. Defensively we need to get back to basics, really back to basics. With Defour and Brady back and Hendrick and JBG we have players that can knock the ball around, but they need to stay fit, and play every minute until they start to play as a unit. Only then will we see if we have a team good enough to stay up.

I think that's a pretty bang on summary. A lot of our problem derives from the fact that when we successfully deal with opponent's attack, we're struggling to do anything next. Going back to Dyche's first two Burnley teams, we often had Ings and then Gray running the channels and giving us a bit of an outlet into wide areas. Wood gave us that a bit last season too. Defour and Cork at their best gave us another avenue, by being good at holding onto the ball in midfield areas. Arfield and to a lesser extent Boyd were also good at keeping the ball under pressure and protecting it.

Certainly against Chelsea, we didn't have that - Vokes is a fine target man and I'm a hgue fan, but he's pretty static and at his best getting the ball and linking the game quickly, which requires support. He's not good at holding the ball for long periods with his back to goal (Barnes is better, and it might get him a gig next Saturday). Brady wasn't match sharp and JBG is OK at holding the ball, but no better. The midfield and the rest of the team was pretty one paced, so we weren't set up to absorb the game for long periods because we couldn't get a breather.