Welcome back Owen...
AFTER this week's international break, there are a couple of tasty Lancashire derbies to whet the appetite, the first renewing the rivalry with Preston.
It's always a match to look forward to although this time around it has serious rivalry from the match a week and a half later, when Bolton travel to Turf Moor to play Burnley in the Carling Cup.
It means, of course, a swift return to Burnley for Owen Coyle, who left in such controversial circumstances back in January.
It would be naive to expect the former boss's reception to be any other than hostile, so soon after the event.
Too much hostility, however, can be counter-productive if the game starts going wrong, and I've sat through enough of those over the years, most recently v Blackburn last spring.
But it would be nicely ironic if Burnley could engineer a victory in the competition that kick-started the Coyle-led promotion to the Prem campaign. There's little doubt that the exhilarating run to the semi-final gave Burnley the impetus to seize the play-off berth.
Having felt very hard done by in the two-legger against Spurs (that odd away goals rule rather than Harry Redknapp's team per se), the side's heads didn't drop as they timed their play-off run to perfection.
Another such run wouldn't go amiss, and what better game in which to really get one going?
- BURNLEY were caught for pace against Swansea in their first league defeat of the season and weren't helped by Tyrone Mears' sending off.
With Swansea, briefly as it turned out, down to 10 men after one of their own players saw red the opportunity for the Clarets to make use of an extra man was lost the moment Mears, having just been clattered himself, returned to the pitch after receiving treatment and got his own marching orders after clashing with former Burnley loanee Nathan Dyer.
At the time of writing it might scotch any move away from Turf Moor for Mears, allowing the Prem squad to be kept intact minus Robbie Blake and Steven Fletcher but plus the new signings. If Tyrone can get back to the form of the first half of last season still at Burnley, that'd do me.
- ONE deadline day rumour had Burnley spurning Steve Cotterill's offer from Portsmouth to return David Nugent to Turf Moor - but he was wanting a Clarets first teamer (unspecified, but likely to be one of the few players still here when he was) in return.
I wouldn't have minded, especially with Chris Iwelumo having hamstring trouble, which it is hoped does not keep him out of contention for a place for too long.
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Weather for Halifax
Saturday 11 February 2012
Today
Sunny spells
Temperature: -1 C to 0 C
Wind Speed: 8 mph
Wind direction: South west
Tomorrow
Cloudy
Temperature: 3 C to 5 C
Wind Speed: 10 mph
Wind direction: North west
