IT IS MORE THAN A QUARTER OF A century since Burnley have beaten Blackburn Rovers so there was an understandable satisfaction for Steve Cotterill to see his team, from the middle of the Coca-Cola Championship, keep yet another clean sheet, their seventh in ten games, against their Barclays Premiership neighbours to take a shared place in today’s FA Cup quarter-finals draw.
As helicopters whirred overhead and all police leave was cancelled in this part of East Lancashire, as a streaker break-danced on the sandy pitch and another pitch invader threatened to fight Robbie Savage, there was simply too much at stake to cast aside the shackles and go for broke. Burnley’s renaissance since Cotterill took charge last summer has been built on pragmatism and the manager was not about to break the mould yesterday.
“I thought both teams didn’t want to lose today,” he said. “That seemed to be the order of the day. Premiership teams always shift the ball around that much more quickly, they’ve always got that cutting edge, so you have to make sure you don’t open yourself up to them. We didn’t want to get beaten on our own patch.”
That was the bottom line: joint ownership of bragging rights and a piece of the action in the quarter-finals draw were too much to lose. “I don’t know if it was a good game or not,” Cotterill added. “I’m not sure it was a spectacle. I know we weren’t happy with aspects of our game in the first half but Blackburn are a Premiership club and we knew we had to play well to match them.”
It was not until seven minutes from time, when Mo Camara beat two men and drove inside from the left wing to shoot from an acute angle, that Brad Friedel had to make a save. Blackburn were not exactly gung-ho themselves, Morten Gamst Pedersen heading over Savage’s free kick early on and twice forcing excellent saves from Brian Jensen from free kicks, while Paul Dickov shot wide when clean through, but they did attack with more penetration.
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“I felt we had the better of the chances and created more,” Mark Hughes, their manager, said. “All in all, though, it was a good job well done. Premiership clubs have learnt to their cost that this is a difficult place to come.”
Both Aston Villa, in the Carling Cup, and Liverpool, in the third round of this competition, have been beaten at Turf Moor this season and Burnley will feel they are far from out of this tie. The inter-passing of Tony Grant and Micah Hyde in the centre of midfield was top quality while Gary Cahill and John McGreal provided a defensive shield of Premiership calibre.
“I’ve just been trying to cheer the lads up in the dressing-room,” Cotterill said, “and I said, ‘Come on, when was the last time Burnley were in the FA Cup quarter-final draw?’ The answer came back ‘two years ago’, so that killed me stone dead.”