The Season Is Upon Us

We’re nearly there, thankfully the football season is almost upon us. It seems like a lifetime when the close season falls without a World Cup or European Championship to maintain your regular football intake.

Pre-season friendlies do help for those that could attend, but there’s nothing like the real thing, where the results matter, and now we’re just a few days away from the highs and (hopefully not so many) lows of another season at Turf Moor.

Four players in, four players out, but has the squad been improved enough for a challenge on the elusive top six? Kiraly, Jordan, Berisha and Blake have replaced the outgoing Coyne, McGreal, Sinclair and Branch, surely an improvement on last season’s squad, but will the new recruits have enough quality to fire us into that top six?

Our visitors on Saturday, West Brom on the other hand have had a much busier summer on the transfer front. Their failure to reach the Premier League after reaching last season’s play-off final has meant the loss of a number of star players.

Diomansy Kamara has joined Fulham for £6m, Jason Koumas has cost Wigan £5.3m, and £1.5m has also been received following Paul McShane’s switch to Sunderland. Steve Watson and Chris Perry have left on frees, joining Sheffield Wednesday and Luton Town respectively.

Plenty of money has also been spent though, including a whopping £2.5m spent on Luton defender Leon Barnett alone. £750,000 has gone on Stoke defender Carl Hoefkens, and £600,000 on Portuguese midfielder Filipe Teixeira (pictured above). Striker Craig Beattie has joined from Celtic for £1.25m, scoring a hat-trick recently in the 3-1 friendly win over Dutch side Heerenveen.

The Baggies have also signed Middlesbrough’s young midfielder James Morrison, signing for an initial £1.5m, and other signings include Shelton Martis (Hibernian, £50,000), and Bostjan Cesar (Marseille, loan). They’re not expected to stop there either, with specultation suggesting Southampton’s Pele and Sheffield Wednesday’s Chris Brunt are apparently interesting Tony Mowbray.

So, all in all, a much busier summer at The Hawthorns than at Turf Moor, although Burnley manager Steve Cotterill insists he will continue to be careful in the transfer market despite a much larger budget reportedly available this summer than in previous seasons.

Cotterill said this week that he would not just throw money about for the sake of adding numbers, and would not waste Brendan Flood’s money unless he thought the deal was right. It is looking like that could well be it with regards signings before Saturday, although the transfer market will remain open until 31st August should Cotterill wish to make further improvements to see us through to the winter.

It’s going to be a tough game, make no mistake of that and there surely won’t be too many teams finish higher than West Brom this season. The Baggies will be boosted by a healthy following and have multi-million pound summer signings up against our modest, yet encouraging summer signings.

It is worth bearing mind that it is only three league games since we beat the Baggies at Turf Moor, the Clarets recovering from 2-0 down to win 3-2 with a late Chris McCann goal snatching all three points from West Brom who had Paul McShane sent off for a sickening, albeit unfortunate clash of heads with James O’Connor.

A win would be massively encouraging over one of the division’s fancied teams, and that would take us into two games in the remainder of August that look potentially easier than this one. Scunthorpe and QPR follow the Baggies, but let’s hope to get off to a flyer on Saturday and show that finally, we can compete with the big boys.

Up the Clarets.