Winning ways
Plus: ANASS ZAROURY!
Another couple of wins and Burnley are back on top of the Championship table.
Winning ways
On the way out of Turf Moor on Saturday afternoon, I overhead a couple of Reading fans complaining. “How are you top of the league,” they whinged.
Well, lads, I’ll let you into a little secret. You get points for winning football games.
Burnley have won three on the spin for the first time under Vincent Kompany. After a second successive Saturday comeback victory, it’s now five wins out of six games.
We have been hard to beat all season - Watford are still the only team to beat us with more than a third of the campaign now in the books - but finally we seem to have found a way to turn draws into wins on a consistent basis.
Momentum is huge in this game and Burnley have it in absolute spades right now.
Even when Reading took the lead on Saturday, against the run of play even though we had not got out of second gear with our backup midfield, I felt we had enough in the tank to come back and win. Days like Sunderland will give fans and players that belief.
And when you have a talent like Manuel Benson to throw on as a sub, all bets are off.
There will likely now be a clamour for Benson to start in midweek but he seems an ideal impact substitute to me. Johann Gudmundsson is doing a solid job helping to give both our attack and defence a more defined shape, offering a greater level of defensive protection than most of the other attackers we feature.
Being able to use JBG’s experience for an hour, then swap for the craft and flair of Benson, is the best of both worlds. Some rotation will naturally be needed due to the relentless schedule of the Championship and Benson will get starts over the season.
For now, though, he is making the most of his cameos off the bench. It is one thing coming on to take on tired defences with fresh legs and another to find a way to influence games for 90 minutes on a consistent basis.
Benson’s impact on our new-found ability to grind out wins regularly cannot be understated. But he should stay as a substitute, where he is thriving, for now at least.
ANASS ZAROURY!
After a relatively slow start to his Burnley career, Zaroury is now starting to dominate.
It took the 21-year-old a little while to nail down his place, but he has fast become one of the first names on Vincent Kompany’s team sheet. Our system is now completely centred around Zaroury, who has been handed the keys to the entire attack.
When Zaroury got off the mark in the 4-0 demolition of Swansea City there was a sense the floodgates could soon open. And that’s what has happened. Zaroury’s sensational strike against Sunderland was effectively the winning goal and he was at it again on Saturday, stooping to nod home at the back post deep into added time.
For a while I wondered if we needed both Zaroury and Benson when they seem so similar. Yes, what sort of team would need a match-winning winger on both sides?
Doh.
Burnley wasted some money over the summer - £2 million on Luke McNally looks one of our oddest deals in some time and there has been no return on the £4 million spent on Scott Twine yet due to injury - yet the £3.5 million for Zaroury looks a bargain.
Not just because he is Belgian and plays on the left, but there is something Eden Hazard-ish about Zaroury, isn’t there? In the Norwich game he gave right-back Max Aarons an absolutely torrid time, beating him half a dozen times in just 20 minutes.
In other games, Zaroury has been more on the periphery, but still popping up in key moments. Zaroury was relatively quiet against Swansea but extremely effective when he did get on the ball. He hadn’t been great against Reading, but he found a way to contribute when it mattered. And the scary thing for opponents is that Zaroury is only going to keep getting better as he continues to adapt to the rigours of English football.
That’s it for this week. Next weekend I’m away in Germany on a lads football trip so will miss our match - meaning it’s an ideal opportunity for others to contribute. If you have an idea for a piece to go in the newsletter, let me know via email or on Twitter.
Who would you compare Zaroury to, from Burnley’s past or the wider football world?