With autumnal chill in the air that rarest of migratory sights, the Injury Time Winner, flutters into view as City ease past a poor Burnley side managed to the soon-to-depart Steve Cotterill.

Report by Mark Gretton.

It’s 2 minutes into injury time and we’re battering them. They’re down to 10 men after Unsworth has been rightly sent off for scything Campbell down on the edge of the area and they’re scampering round frantically now. Okocha, whom the manager (very sensibly) left out of the starting 11 has now come on as the manager has decided (very sensibly) that when you’re a player down the last man you’d like to see slaloming at your defence is the infuriatingly gifted Jay-Jay. And we fashion one last chance, as McPhee, as he’s done all night, unsettles the Burnley defence and, not for the first time, we’re clear, with only Gabor Kiraly to beat. The announcer has just called Kiraly ‘The Burnley man of the match,’ and this is a sensible distinction, as the real man of what has been an exciting, skilful and completely satisfying night match would have to be a Tiger, not a tit in pyjama bottoms. Kiraly hasn’t been wonderful, he’s dropped the ball frequently, his distribution has made the often radarless Myhill look like Glen Hoddle, but he’s made some sharp stops. And his frequent involvement tells you all you need to know about which team’s had the best of this and is about to win it deservedly. We crane and squint down the far end as the flapping twit is drawn out of his comfort zone, gets his angle just wrong, and allows the ball to slide past him. We go up in glee as we watch the ball run, unaccountably, past the post and against the hoardings. Bugger. I start to compose in my head a report on the theme of how much better we were than Saturday, and how a point here is never a negligible achievement. That was the game.

But not yet. We really are very, very close to the end of the extra 4 minutes referee Foy has permitted and Marney has another chance to cross from the right. The younger Dean has had a good night, tackling well, prompting skilfully and finding forward players with incisive and clever passing. Unfortunately his dead ball kicking remains as resolutely pants as Kiraly’s nether garments, corners clanging against the head of the first defender, free kicks preceded by a visible shrugging of the shoulders with palms upturned in bemusement as to what he should be doing. It’s possible that this is a clever training ground signal, replacing the one hand raised (“I’m going to hit this one at the first defender”) or the two hands raised (”Yeah, and this one as well”) but it doesn’t exactly fill the faithful with confidence that anyone is actually sure what should be happening out there. But this time he gets it past the first man by the expedient of launching it like a rugby union garryowen and it is sinking rapidly towards the back post. And now it looks like the back of a union lineout – except this is exciting – as big men from both sides pile into the ball. And finally, gloriously, it goes into the net and the City players who hadn’t already ended up there fling themselves on top of the scorer who, when eventually he’s pulled out from under what now looks like a collapsed scrum, proves to be Michael Turner. The lanky central defender doesn’t get that many goals, probably not enough, but they’re a lot of fun away from home on a crisp evening as anyone who witnessed the volley that won us the game at Luton last campaign will tell you. And he’s won us the game tonight and we cavort homewards from Pendle and the Pennines towards our own dear flatlands

Even had we lost this would have been a heartening evening as a team, so supine in Shepherds Bush at the weekend, stood tall at Turf Moor and suggested they had actually listened as Phil Brown bollocked them for the regulations 40 minutes in a locked dressing room after Saturday’s surrender. (Isn’t our manager just the master of football cliché? It’s always 40 minutes players are kept in for. And in a “locked dressing room,” as though if it weren’t the players would be trying to break out, or would be rescued by well-wishers from the outside. And do dressing rooms even have locks? I digress) But we won and won well, long though the breakthrough took. Making the trans-Pennine trip well worth undertaking were:

Myhill
Ricketts Turner Brown Delaney
Garcia Marney Ashbee Hughes
Campbell McPhee

So the only change was Hughes, damaged groin healed suspiciously quickly since Friday, in for the jaded Jay-Jay. And we were quickly into our work in the crisp, tangy Pennine air, with McPhee and Garcia immediately prominent as they attacked the away end holding perhaps 500 Tiggers. A free kick was won and broke to Delaney whose right foot volley, to no-one’s great surprise, went over. A few minutes later we should have taken the lead as Campbell and McPhee twist and turn pacily and find Hughes faced only by Kiraly. The Magyar muppet comes out and blocks well, and then does even better as the ball again breaks to Hughes who, with no Burnsters bothered about challenging, has an age to control and shoot again but the hilarious Hungarian hangs on to it well.

We are cooking now and we seem to have taken the lead as McPhee finishes well having outpaced the defence but not the linesman’s flag as he is ruled offside. This was an intriguing one as the ball was clearly deflected to him, I thought off a Burnley defender, but it’s accepted without protest on the pitch. McPhee and Campbell are giving Unsworth and Carlisle an unhappy time and our midfield, bolted together by Ashbee and Marney is controlling the game. Not that Burnley are without threat. They get the ball forward quickly when they can and they have an awful lot of strikers in the building and one of them on the pitch, Andy Gray, out-turns Brown too easily and skims one over the bar before Myhill moves.

But we’re having most of it, a spannered freekick is rescued at the far post by Ashbee for Delaney to volley and Kiraly to save. Then Marney turns inside and finds Garcia who tracks away from goal but then creams one with his left foot from the edge of the area that Kiraly competently flicks over. Kiraly doesn’t do much more than advance a minute later as McPhee is through but then stumbles and scuffs it out when better was expected.

Burnley are now looking a bit ragged in the face of this. Robbie Blake amuses us with a comedy shoeing straight out of play that is then capped by Wade Elliott who places a measured ball carefully straight into touch. The Tiger faithful are suitably appreciative of this attempt to entertain and applaud warmly, but it is less well received by striker Gray and he and Elliott enjoy a frank exchange of views over this that goes on and off for several minutes. The home-based Lankys watch it all in gloomy silence. And so ends a first half which has seen us skilful, fluid, high tempo, but undeniably, goalless.

Turf moor hasn’t been a particularly happy hunting ground for the Tigers over the years and it’s unlikely to come top of many lists of favoured away venues but it has associations for me, not the least being that it was the first place I ever attended a professional football game, in 1969 seeing as you ask. And so I was intrigued to see the match progie had a feature where a fan picked his all time favourite team. This started promisingly enough with Colin Waldron and got better with Andy Lockhead with the fan getting an extra mark for pointing out that Lockhead had ‘ a forehead of granite’ but then it dipped alarmingly by including Ian Wright, Paul Gascoigne and Chris Waddle, each one of them prefaced with a variation on the theme of ‘I know he was well past his best by the time he rolled up here and he did absolutely nothing for us, but wasn’t it great when he was first introduced to the crowd before buggering off with a paycheque we could never, ever, afford.’ This meant that his team had no room for Ralph Coates, Lockhead’s only serious rival as the premature-baldy-failed-comb-over-pinup of the time, no room for Welsh arch-trickster Leighton James and no room for Steve Kindon (built like a coal shed, ran like a greyhound). A very poor selection. And whilst we’re on the subject of the programme, in his column director Brendon Flood posed the interesting question “ Are we already in Heaven?” Given that Mr Flood has been brave enough to seek advice on something that is obviously beyond his cognisance, let me help him out: no, you’re not.

But after a half-time brightened by the appearance to draw the lottery of one Andy Payton, rightly warmly applauded by both sets of fans for his work for our respective clubs, we got going again straight away, McPhee and Campbell both just failing to get on the end of good passing moves, and we have a period of fairly sustained pressure. The closest we come is after Campbell runs at them, looks like he should shoot, but then squares for McPhee who strikes it well at Kiraly who claws it down but only to Campbell who had to, had to score, but didn’t as somehow the eccentric Eastern European comes up with it.

It’s becoming increasingly blood and thunderine and Burnley haven’t given up; twice McCann is given too much time and room at the back post, the first time Myhill saves well – custodian of the leather – the second time McCann outjumps both Ricketts and Turner and Bo watches motionless and silent, along with 500 tigerfolk, as the ball comes back off the bar. We don’t look as though we have quite the grip that we had, our old nemesis Adi Akinbiyi is now on and inducing foreboding in the faithful. Sensibly, Deano is brought on for Hughes as we commendably go 4-3-3 to win the game. Minutes later Campbell is through and odds on before he is decisively and illegally stopped by Unsworth. From the opposite end we celebrated the award of what we assumed was a penalty, though once Burnley formed a wall, I thought it more likely a free kick had been given. Not much gets past me. Neither the dismissal of the player nor the award of the free kick produced any argument on the pitch and, with 3 minutes of regular time left, it set up the finale and the victory.

So a good win against a side who are seldom easybeats and a performance that was fluorescent with commitment and spirit after the Shepherds Bush surrender. Everyone did well, McPhee, despite the misses, had his best performance since Barmby was prompting him last winter, the defence had its alarms but did well against good strikers and the midfield improved out of all recognition. Garcia had one of the nights when he does give a toss, Marney looked like he once played at Spurs amongst proper footballers and Ashbee was, simply, excellent. He gets a lot of criticism, much of it from me, and he deserves it too, but he was flawless last night. We didn’t just see the pro-zone-stoking-3-yard-under-no-pressure-passes that so beguile the manager; by the end he was pinging the ball around like Platini when he wasn’t breaking up Burnley attacks. Man of the match. Bryan Hughes is still a puzzle; he gave us a far better shape than Okocha has recently, he is clearly skilful and reads the game but, perhaps as an anti-Ashbee balance, his passes never get to a colleague. His game is ambitious and expansive but also, unfortunately, a bit shit. He has the confidence to demand the ball and you find yourself wishing he didn’t. But he clearly can play and it may yet come right.

The manager had a good night too and, despite silly brown shoes, addiction to cliché and the teeth-on-edge way every opposing manager gets a pet name check, it would be churlish and wrong not to point out how much better this team can play than the one he took over nearly a year ago. The one thing he hasn’t yet managed to do is infuse it with anything like consistency. What a good time it would be to start that now, with Burnley’s fellow Lanksters Preston visiting on Saturday, still weeping over the loss of talisman David Nugent, before a fortnight’s break and the silly, silly Scunts.

HULL CITY (4-4-2): Myhill; Ricketts, Turner, Brown, Delaney; Garcia, Ashbee, Marney, Hughes; McPhee, Campbell.  Subs: Windass (for Hughes, 81), Okocha (for Campbell, 89), Livermore, Dawson, Duke.

Goals: Turner 90

Booked: Ashbee

Sent Off: None

BURNLEY: Kiraly, Alexander, Carlisle, Unsworth, Jordan, Elliott, Spicer, McCann, Lafferty, Gray, Blake.  Subs: Mahon (for Blake, 46), Akinbiyi (for Elliott, 72), Jones (for Spicer, 82), Jensen, Harley.

Goals: None

Booked: None

Sent Off: Unsworth

REFEREE:  C Foy

ATTENDANCE: 9,978