Football Poets

Sean Dyche sacked at Burnley

Here we go again
The sack race as
Opposed to youthful
Egg and spoon races
Sean Dyche, now history
For the Burnley bigwigs
At boardroom level
Sighs of discontent
And then dismissed
In the blink of an eyelid
Relegation looms like
An ugly blight on their landscape
After brief European dalliances
This season the wheels have fallen off
Brake pads need to be oiled
The engine is showing signs of rust,
Wear and tear and Championship
Sirens are wailing at Turfmoor
Burnley, a big club in the historical sense
Once revered by the Lowry
Appreciation society
League Champions from yesteryear
At the beginning of the 1960s when
Everything swung in metronomic fashion
But now decaying and decomposing like
A listed building that once housed
Captains of industry
But Sean Dyche with that gravelly
Delivery, delivered straight from
Working men’s clubs in North
West England but now silenced
Is searching for another club
With footballing crests
And distinctive badges of honour
Burnley, the club you recall
From your 1970s burgeoning adolescence
With Ray Hankin up front
Leighton James shuffling, jinking,
Dropping shoulders of footballing
Duplicity, a wing wizard, head down
Poised like a cobra to spring forward
Pantherine, charging towards by lines
Feline pace, checking, baffling, cleverness in his
Thought patterns, cutting back onto his
Best feet and crossing to the land
Of precise perfection, both near
and far post,
Then Brian Flynn
Eager as a beaver,
Plotting in conspiratorial fashion
But never a spy from the underworld
While Martin Dobson glided and pirouetted
A creative catalyst, a sparking plug, casting
A critical eye in midfield, analysing the
Midfield like a surveyor of quality and taste
Spreading shrewdness and enlightenment
Over the Burnley skyline of the Lowry
Collection of pencil thin, charcoal
Industrial chimneys and quaint mills
Of once mighty influence over
Clouds of smoke mushrooming over
Factory floors, Burnley they turned to
On Saturday afternoons at three
Men, women and children gathered
For their perennial groans and triumphs
But now Sean Dyche, one of football’s
Nice guys finds that managerial hardships
Are part and parcel of our game
And yet sent packing with vital matches
To play for and points on the board
Surely, appalling timing, grimy hands
At the tiller
Perhaps misjudging their moment to
Make, quite possibly rash decisions
But Dyche gets the dismissive boot
Drop kicked into obscurity or
Temporarily so one must hope
Burnley on a downward spiral
Will find just desserts
Time may or may not be on their side
But Sean Dyche has lost that much
Coveted watch. Your clock has lost
Its hour hand and the cold door of farewell
Mr Dyche is this way rather than the other
Be sure to remember
If it’s any consolation
Managers are always vulnerable,
Downtrodden figures, never secure
Never sure of their place, their orientation
Always seeking the elusive chemical formula
For winning Leagues and Cups
Ruined and demoralised by their daily
Toil, drudgery, victims of the game’s
Changing moods and vagaries of climate
We know you’ll be back Sean
Born again
Gritty as granite
Leading from the front
And writer of more compositions
Essays of truth and sincerity
Long ball and directness
Or the Beautiful passing game
On Brian Clough’s well cultivated
Grass, on the ground rather than aerial
Combat.
Where football becomes a floating
Hot air balloon, falling from the air
Like some intruder from another
Suburb, village or town
Sean Dyche we wish you well
Since football managers could never
Tell when their time was up
Read the mind of your demanding
Owners, football management
It has to be a mug’s game.

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