If this is to be Scott Parker’s final game in charge of Burnley, it might be an idea to have someone other than chairman Alan Pace articulate the club’s position.
A defeat at home having led League One side Mansfield in the FA Cup has brought Burnley’s season to an ostensible end in mid-February. There is still a theoretical, mathematical chance of Premier League safety for the Clarets, but in no way a realistic one.
The gap to 17th place is nine points. West Ham are improving; Nottingham Forest and Spurs have both taken action to call in firefighters of varying effectiveness and repute. And Burnley probably need to double their points tally from 26 games in the final 12 to have any hope of staying up, so could certainly do with with this maintaining any sense of momentum built up by their comeback victory over Crystal Palace in midweek.
That felt like one of the “great days ahead” that Pace promised in a PR nightmare of an interview recently. Both he and Parker have attempted to explain away his botched “three-year-old throwing a temper tantrum” metaphor since supporters leapt on that as a perceived slight, but to no avail.
Pace’s pledge to “be the best parents that we can possibly be for this family” has similarly fallen on deaf ears. Burnley fans see him as the stepfather they will never accept, a guardian without authority or heft. Their opinion on Parker is no better.
‘I want you to know that I did not intend for my words to upset our Claret family last week,’ Pace said in his programme notes for Saturday’s game at Turf Moor, ‘but I did mean what I was trying to say, which was that, just because some are upset, does not mean that things are dire and without hope.
‘While we cannot always see what is around the corner, we can always have a hope and desire for better things to come.’
It turns out the only thing around the corner was a mid-table third-tier side winless in their last five league games. And that was still a thought too petrifying for Parker and Burnley, even with a deserved first-half lead.
Their second-half surrender was shameful. Mansfield were allowed to grow into the game, with Rhys Oates first cancelling out Josh Laurent’s opener before a stunning Louis Reed free-kick sent the Stags into the fifth round for the first time since 1975.
Judging the amount of changes a Premier League side makes in the FA Cup is one of the purest forms of outcome bias, but the nine alterations made to a starting line-up threatening to finally build up a head of stead felt like an avoidable mistake.
For lightning to strike twice so embarrassingly – Parker made 11 changes to a starting line-up which had drawn against Nottingham Forest for their 2-1 Carabao Cup defeat at home to Cardiff in September – is a sackable offence in the wider picture of a failed season.
The scoreline between Burnley home league wins and League One sides emerging victorious at Turf Moor this season is 2-2. That is humiliating.
When perhaps the only thing still keeping Parker in gainful employment as Burnley stroll towards a third relegation in as many Premier League campaigns is his Championship promotion record, such humiliating defeats to lower-league sides are bound to lead to those “temper tantrums” which are becoming commonplace at Turf Moor.
