DIE "ENGLISCHE WOCHE"

Mgladbach II 2 RWE 2
Reading 0 Burnley 2

Die Suche nach dem Auswärtserfolgserlebnis ( von Auswärtssieg möchte man in Anbetracht der RWE-Auswärtsbilanz nicht wirklich sprechen) gestaltete sich zunächst so freudlos wie immer, nein eigentlich noch schlimmer. Mitte der 1.HZ lagen die Rot-Weissen schon mit 0:2 hinten, vor etwas weniger als 500 Zuschauern, was für eine imposante Zuschauerzahl.
Aber ich habe ein Rezept gefunden, wie man mit RWE-Auswärtsspielen umgehen kann, wenn man nicht selbst vor Ort ist und live dabei zu sein bei einem RWE-Auswärtsspiel, das ist momentan nun wahrhaftig keine verlockende Vorstellung.
Also, es ganz einfach: Direkt nach dem ersten Gegentreffer, spätestens aber nach dem zweiten, raus auf den Balkon, Buch lesen, evtl. noch ein Bier zur Hand und dann einfach warten. Wie von Geisterhand wird beim Blick durch den Balkontürspalt Richtung Liveticker aus dem 2:0 erst ein 2:1 und dann sogar noch ein 2:2. Auswärtspunkt !Auswärtspunkt!! Dank Toren von Wunderlich und Kühne.
Schön wäre es, wenn Mike Wunderlich mithilfe dieses Tores vielleicht doch zumindest etwas von der Form wieder findet, die ihn bei Köln II ausgezeichnet haben muss. Nun hat man bei RWE wahrlich schon eine mittlerweile unüberschaubare Menge an Spielern gesehen, die mit großen Hoffnungen verpflichtet wurden, dann aber in Windeseile die Vermutung nach talentfreien Zwillingsbrüdern oder Doppelgängern aufkommen ließen. Noch weigere ich mich aber zu glauben, das auch Mike Wunderlich in diese Kategorie fällt.
Weiter geht es bereits am Freitag mit dem Heimspiel gegen Leverkusen II, eine der vielen sympathischen Reservetruppen. Die Plätze 1-4 werden nun in der Regionalliga West von Zweitvertretungen belegt, Lev II und Mgladbach II liegen dahinter schon in Lauerstellung, wenn die ersten 6 Plätze am Ende der Saison an Reserven vergeben werden, sollte das niemanden überraschen. Gibt es beim DFB eigentlich jemanden, der die Entwicklung der Reserveligen, äh Regionalligen im Auge behält ? Wahrscheinlich nicht und warum auch, läuft doch, läuft doch im deutschen Fußball.

Das wesentlich interessantere und wichtigere Spiel fand direkt im Anschluß dann aber in Reading statt. Mit einem 2:0 im Madejski Stadium sicherte Burnley sich den Einzug ins Championship Play-Off Finale, wo man am 25.Mai auf Sheffield Utd trifft. Der Sieg hat ungeahnte, aber schöne Folgen für die Außenwahrnehmung der Clarets, denen plötzlich quasi als Botschafter des guten alten Fußballs die Herzen der neutralen Fans zufliegen, praktisch nach dem Motto old football v modern football
siehe auch die nachfolgenden, von When Saturday Comes und twohundredpercent.com rüberkopierten Artikel, die eigentlich jedem Fußballromantiker, und was sind RWE –Fans wenn nicht Fußballromantiker, einen dicken Klos im Hals bescheren müssten, denn runtergebrochen auf deutsche Verhältnisse, müsste und könnte man solche Artikel auch mal in Verbindung mit RWE lesen.


Burnley heading back where they belong?
Monday 11 May ~
Reading fans might now want to hear it but I'm prepared to bet that a lot of viewers, especially those above a certain age, will want Burnley to prevail in tonight's Championship play-off semi-final. Football fans aged over 40 will remember Burnley as First Division regulars and I still tend to regard them, as whimsical as this may sound, as a top-level club fallen on hard times rather than the habitués of the bottom two divisions that they have been for most of the past 30 years. If either Burnley or Preston were to be promoted this season, there would be eight clubs from the north-west in the top level, the most there has been since 1960-61. At that time, Liverpool were in the seventh of their eight years as a Second Division club – and Burnley were reigning League champions.

In a football annual published that year, Burnley were compared to Stade de Reims, the French team that had been in two European Cup finals over the preceding five years. It wasn't a fanciful suggestion. Both clubs were from small towns with consequently modest home gates, and had built their success on a steady supply of talent from a well organised youth system – when Burnley acquired striker Frank Casper from Rotherham in 1967 it was the first time in seven years that they had paid a fee for a player. Not that their squad was staffed with locals – for a while the majority came from the north-east via Jack Hixon, the scout who later spotted Alan Shearer.



Reims' era ended with relegation in 1963-64. They returned to the first level subsequently but their only achievement of note since that time was to be runners-up in the French Cup in 1976. Like the other Lancashire town teams, Burnley were badly hit by the abolition of the maximum wage which led to players gravitating to the region's four biggest clubs in Liverpool and Manchester. They hung on longer than the others – after a brief spell in the Second, they finished in the top half of Division One in successive seasons between 1973 and 1975. But like Bolton, Preston and Blackpool they eventually spent time in the fourth level.

Now in a wholly different age for football, Preston and Burnley might meet at Wembley to contest a place in the First Division, from which Preston have been absent since going down in 1961. Some people, and not just Blackburn fans, would be wholly unimpressed with the notion of someone feeling a sentimental attachment to either of these clubs. But football's history can't simply be brushed away, however much effort is put into divorcing the modern game from its past, with regular talk of records set "since the Premier League began". Anyhow, this is as much about the present as the past. Forza Lancashire. Carl Hawkins (wsc.co.uk)



In Praise Of… Burnley Football Club
May 12th, 2009 By admin Category: In Praise Of, Latest, The Football League
This evening’s Championship play-off semi-final between Reading and Burnley was a battle between old and new. In the blue corner were Reading, snatched from the jaws of obscurity by John Madjeski, who dropped them into a brand new stadium and gave them the means to challenge for a place in the Premier League. In the claret corner, representing “old football”, were Burnley. In many respects, Burnley are the anti-Reading. Stoically northern (it’s almost impossible to even say “Burnley” without lapsing into a cod-Lancastrian accent), they still play at the pleasingly onomatopoeic Turf Moor, which is one of the oldest football grounds in English football and which seems to almost sit overlooking the town as a reminder of glory days gone by. They are a club with a rich and deep history who, should they get promotion into the Premier League through the play-offs, would be taking their place in the top division of English football for the first time since 1976.

Founder members of the Football League in 1888, they are one of just three clubs to have spent their entire history playing in that competition (with Preston North End and Notts County - one of the original twelve, Accrington, folded and was replaced while all of the others have managed at least one season in the Premier League). Every defining characteristic of the traditional football club is present and correct - the autocratic chairman (and in Bob Lord they arguably had the most autocratic of the lot), the distinctive colours, the occasional financial crises and championship winning sides, Burnley have had the lot. Twice league champions (in 1921 and 1960), they even reached the quarter-finals of the European Cup before losing to SV Hamburg in 1961.

When they reached their lowest point, they played out a dramatic escape from what was widely expected be oblivion. Automatic promotion and relegation between the Football League and the Football Conference was being introduced in 1987, and Burnley went into their final match of the season against Orient needing a win to stay up. A crowd of almost 16,000 packed Turf Moor out and Burnley won the match 2-1. This result, coupled with a defeat for Lincoln City, meant that Lincoln (whose two successive relegations in 1986 and 1987 could be partly be attributed to the after-effects of their involvement as the opposition at Valley Parade on the day of the Bradford Fire in 1985) became the first team to be automatically relegated from the Football League.

Since then, Burnley’s fortunes have improved. They were beaten at Wembley in the final of the 1988 Sherpa Vans Trophy (now the Johnstones Paint Trophy) by Wolverhampton Wanderers, but the 80,000 crowd remains the biggest crowd ever for a match between two Fourth Divisions and was a potent symbol of the two clubs’ latent potential. Unlike Wolves (their sparring partners during the two clubs’ last truly great days during the late 1950s), however, they haven’t yet made it into the Premier League. They narrowly missed out on the play-offs in 2001 and 2002, but have spent much of the last four or five years keeping their heads above water in the Championship.

The signs of their potential this season have been there for anyone willing to look closely enough. They knocked both Chelsea and Arsenal out of the League Cup and were moments from a Wembley final against Manchester United before Spurs nicked it from under their noses. In the league, they came into form at just the right time, losing just one of their eleven matches to finish in fifth place. In some respects, they were fortunate to be playing Reading in the semi-finals. Reading had looked like shoo-ins for an automatic promotion place throughout much of the winter but had stumbled in the spring and missed out in favour of Birmingham City on the last day of the season.

Burnley won the first leg 1-0 at Turf Moor last week, which might have appeared rather too slender a lead to take to Reading for the second leg, but Reading’s home form - they were without a home win since beating Wolves 1-0 at the end of January - seemed to indicate that Burnley had a great chance of getting through, and so it turned out. Two goals in seven second half minutes this evening were enough to wrap the result up for Burnley, who will now play Sheffield United at Wembley for a place in the Premier League on Bank Holiday Monday. Manager Owen Coyle deserves all credit for dragging his team up from mid-table and giving them a great chance of making the Premier League for the first time.

If they do make it into the Premier League next season, it will mean that seven of the founding members of the Football League - Aston Villa, Wolves, Blackburn Rovers, Bolton Wanderers, Stoke City, Everton and Burnley - will be in the top division of English football, 121 years after the formation of the Football League. Even merely the continuing existence of the founding fathers of English football should be a cause for celebration. The fact that a market town with a population of 75,000 people can challenge for a place amongst the English football’s elite remains a testament to the strength in depth of English football. And who - apart from Sheffield United supporters - wouldn’t want to see Burnley vs Wolves in the Premier League next season?(twohundredpercent.net)

Ein Sieg trennt Burnley nun noch vom Aufstieg in die Premier League, eine große Leistung für einen alten Traditionsclub aus einer kaum 75,000 Einwohner zählenden Kleinstadt.
Mit 60 Spielen hat Burnley die meisten Spiele aller Football League Clubs absolviert, dabei nur 23 Spieler eingesetzt. Zum Vergleich: Halbfinalgegner Reading kommt auf 52 Spiele und 32 eingesetzte Spiele. Der 37jährige Graeme Alexander war dabei in jedem einzelnen Pflichtspiel beim Anpfiff auf dem Platz .
Wenn ich nicht wüsste, das der Fußballgott ein hinterlistiges Mistvieh ist, würde ich sagen: Komm, lass doch nur ein Mal, ein einziges Mal, die richtigen gewinnen.

Ein Sieg von Burnley könnte Signalwirkung für all die Clubs besitzen, deren Fans schon seit geraumer Zeit denken „unsere besten Tage sind vorbei und vergessen, wir sind nur noch dazu da, die Ligen aufzufüllen“.
Burnley ist gerade dabei, den Gegenbeweis anzutreten.

/M/