I am penning this at Half Time, we are 1-0 down! Yet again a dreadful first 45 from Burnley. We started with the line up we all wanted, after 19 minutes we lost John McGreal through injury and brought on Wayne Thomas. As for Wednesday, they brought a couple back. But surely no one could imagine the possibility of on-loan Chris Eagles scoring from the right on 4 minutes 43 seconds! We were asleep, and with commentators blaming the long trip to Norwich (the team flew!) things didn't get any better. On 20 minutes the ball deflected off Harley and over Beast, the ball hit the post and came out! Still we didn't wake up. So what will the second half bring? Let's hope it's the usual better performance!

The Second Half saw Branchy go off, rather unfortunately, for Garreth O'Connor. I'm afraid to say that we really should have took GNW off and gone 5 in the middle but SC knows best. So was it the usual better second half? No! Although we started stronger we lacked any real punch and when Wednesday scored a second on 56 minutes, you felt that was it! We tried I guess, but Ade was very quiet and GNW kept falling over. We did score, a penalty on the 84th minute being converted by Garreth. The last 10 minutes were all Burnley but the longer it went the more you realised we had "chucked this one in"! SC tried a change and brought Danny K on (remember him!) going 3 at the back. This made little if any impact.

Very disappointed today and yet again Burnley lose to a much poorer side! You can blame the ref for decisions again, for a start off Weaver should have been off, and they had no reserve keeper on the bench, but we didn't play well enough full stop. Down to 9th but with other games just started we could drop to 12th! 3 Points against QPR on Monday are now a must.

UP THE CLARETS

We are really pleased to include a Match Analysis today from our very own Turftalker.

Pitch – Let's first of all discount any myth that the pitch seriously dented our chances today. It was the same for both teams and while it did hinder some movement and passing, we really did fail to pass consistently anyway. One thing which must be of concern however is that the pitch was uncovered yesterday and during the half time interval only one man with a fork actually went over to try and sort it out.

Steve Cotterill’s tactics – I actually felt he got it a little bit wrong today. Branch may well have been injured and Gareth O’Connor did score the penalty, but I think he should have been brought on for someone else. Branch actually offered us something down the left hand side, while in the second half our left wing was a defunct attacking tool. Furthermore it was quite obvious that John Hills of Sheffield Wednesday was undertaking a man marking job on Wade Elliot, and a relatively successful one at that. This undermined our fluidity on the right wing, forcing us to pump high balls in to the box when they had 8 men in the area. Indeed it is worth noting that our penalty came from fast footwork and nifty passing on the ground, rather than a long and rather hopeful punt in to the big men.

Overall – Today’s game against a very poor Sheffield Wednesday team showed up our general weaknesses – that is a lack of consistency. Christmas and New Year is the perfect time to launch a spring board for bigger and better things and while the play offs may be out of our reach this season, it does not hurt to dream a little. We have consistently struggled to start matches at any real tempo and I think that is our current biggest weakness. While winning at QPR is not essential, it would really help show that our lofty previous league position was not solely down to a good set of home performances. However I felt today’s match showed a Burnley team that did not and perhaps could not match Sheffield Wednesday’s greater desire. Constantly second to the loose ball and wasteful in possession and with Ade Akinbiyi struggling to make the same impression as usual we lacked any real attacking outlet.

"For 30 minutes, I don't think their back four were out of the 18 yard box but you've got to give them credit. They have come here today and they out-fought us and out-scrapped us for an hour and that's unlike us because we don't normally lose those sort of contests. For an hour we were second best and we know that, although it doesn't happen very often."

"It's tough for us, but the one thing we aren't going to do is complain about weary legs because it's the same for everybody and they came here and out-fought us, that's the bottom line. We didn't have enough players in the dressing room that wanted to win that game and that was probably typified with that scramble in the box and they got a toe to it twice and we didn't."

"Hopefully, their game against Crewe will be end-to-end and then in the second half end-to-end again and then there's 30 minutes of added time when it's end-to-end again and then Ollie takes the boys out for a new year drink, which probably won't happen! We'd like to get a result there on Monday, but I'm sure QPR will have something to say about that."

"When you're in the position in the league that we are you get very apprehensive. It finished up like the Alamo. But when you think about the saves Nicky had to make, it was very few. They stuck their head in, cleared their lines and worked their tails off. Hopefully we can build from this now. We have to try and drag as many teams into our area of the league as we can."