Coyle is Claret's most important fixture

This Premier League stuff isn’t bad is it?

In the last few weeks Burnley’s name has been added the Premier League section of various websites whilst looking at the new league table certainly makes for hours of entertaining reading.

If things aren’t strange enough already then look at me; A Burnley Premier League blogger.

Things got even better up on cloud nine this week when the fixtures came out.

A quick glance at the opening few games saw us pitting our wits against four of the leagues top five clubs last season. Following our season opener at Stoke its then games against Manchester United, Everton, Chelsea and Liverpool. Talk about a baptism of fire.

But this is what being in English football’s top flight is all about. The games may be tough but it’s certainly a much better option than the trips to Peterborough, Doncaster and Barnsley that we could’ve been facing.

Last season saw us come out of August with two league points and one goal scored so it won’t be a complete disaster if we were to come out of our opening fixtures with little to show from them.

As ever we will be hoping for Owen Coyle’s team to beat the bookies and pick up a few surprise results; and with Manchester United and Everton notorious slow starters in previous seasons who knows?

More realistically we will all be earmarking games we think we can win, most notably against teams like Wigan, Hull, Stoke, Blackburn, Birmingham and Wolves

October in particular is a month in which we could rocket up the form table with games against four of those teams including our most fierce rivals Blackburn.

Not being old enough to witness a Clarets victory over the “bastards” the games on the 17th October and 27th March at Ewood Park and Turf Moor respectively are a mouth watering prospect.

There has however been the sour taste of defeat during Rover’s relegation seasons in the Championship. This time though it feels like we are more evenly matched, we certainly play the better football than Big Sam’s men and hopefully can finally put one over on our six fingered East Lancashire adversaries.

Perhaps the greatest fixture of all was revealed when Owen Coyle announced that he was definitely a permanent one at Turf Moor having signed his new deal this week. There is little need for me to heap yet more superlatives on our Master of Universe, his record speaks for itself and to be quite frank, I’ve already used every delightfully praising adjective I can find in the bloody dictionary.

If we are to survive in the Premier League we will need Coyle’s craft to carefully add to a team that refuses to accept defeat. The defence certainly needs beefing up, however it seems that it’s the other end of the pitch that we could be strengthening first.

A bid of over a million pounds for Swansea striker Jason Scotland has reportedly been made and turned down. The Trinidadian is certainly a handful and has bagged plenty of goals during his time in England. Concerns have been raised over whether he’ll be able to make the step up and at 30 isn’t the type of player that the board suggested we’d be signing. On the other hand I think he’d certainly have an impact and would be a decent acquisition at the right price.

While all the transfer dealings rumble on and agents continue to pimp around their players, signings will be made and some will be missed. All we can do is sit back, relax and put our trust in the manager- and why shouldn’t we? After all, Owen Coyle is God.

Originally posted on: http://blogs.soccernet.com/burnley/