Hoofball 3 Football 2

Having been barely able to crack a smile since our derby day defeat on Sunday I've taken the time to digest exactly why we left Ewood Park with no points.

My conclusion? Well, that's pretty simple; Blackburn deserved their victory on the day. That's not because they outplayed us as a football side, instead they earned their victory in typical Sam Allardyce fashion. Rovers were simply more physical than Burnley, they pressed us better and picked up more of the second balls.

From the moment that Robbie Blake wonderstike hit the back of the net we were second best for the rest of the first half. We stood off Rovers, gifted them plenty of possession and handed them three goals.

Despite the Dunn equaliser and Chimbonda third being well worked moves, the ease at which we let it happen was laughable. It was almost like a training ground demo as we limply opened ourselves up.

In the build up to the second goal there was a foul on Stephen Jordan by Franco Di Santo that was missed by the referee which forced the Burnley fullback to obstruct the oncoming Brain Jensen. That incident aside, we hadn’t learnt from any of the lessons that lost us the game at Stoke as a side with exactly the same long ball and throws tactic punished our naivety once more.

In the second half we improved as the likes of Wade Elliot and Robbie Blake tried to get us playing the football we had come accustomed to. Sadly it just wasn’t happening for us and time and time again we needless gave the ball away.

The introduction of Chris Eagles helped as he immediately took the fight to Rovers. His cameo performances have been of a consistently high standard since the start of the season and must soon surely earn his place in the starting eleven. It was nice to see him show some fight and he deserved his last minute goal, even though it merely served to give the score-line a fairer reflection of the game. Kevin McDonald also did his claim for a starting berth no harm as he looked composed and assured when he was brought on for Andre Bikey.

Eagles post-match comments impressed me too, as our number 33 stated that on our day Rovers are no threat to us. And I’m with him on that; but the fact of the matter is we lost to an average side who, and it pains me to say this, looked like they wanted it more on the day. Let's just hope a defeat against our most fierce rivals will mean will we finally learn from our mistakes.

Despite our defeat I will always commend Owen Coyle and his team for at least trying to play football. For the most part we weren’t at the races on Suinday and let ourselves down; but I’d rather keep the ball on the floor and take the chance of our play not coming off than have our goalkeeper take free kicks on the half way line and lobbing every throw in thirty yards.

The East Lancashire derby part one may have been won by Blackburn; but until our chance to put things right at Turf Moor next March we’ll just take keeping ourselves above Blackburn in the league; starting with a win in our next local derby against Wigan on Saturday.