Newcomers in no mood to listen to trash talk

PREMIER LEAGUE: Marketing men may be grimacing but for us purists we salute the likes of Burnley

THERE ARE 72,000 people in Burnley. I know this because, in the build-up to the club’s game with Manchester United last week, we were told so at least four times an hour by wide-eyed sports news presenters, as if population had suddenly become an index to incompetence when it comes to top-flight football.

Nobody does patronising quite like the Premier League. The cynic in me wants to believe it is all part of some concerted collective effort by the established elite to wear down the newly-promoted with repeated pats on the head – a bit like Chinese water torture, only far more painful and spread over nine tedious months.

The reality, I suspect, is that this is simply the default mode for a media for whom a small town in east Lancashire might as well be downtown Kandahar: hence the rash of chin-stroking newspaper colour pieces and quirky TV featurettes with their Pennine-framed shots of dilapidated terraced housing, abandoned cotton mills and nudge-nudge references to race riots.

Burnley’s prowess as a football team, honed last season when they dispatched no less than five Premier League sides in knockout competitions and came within 120 seconds of reaching the League Cup final, hardly warranted a mention, even after United had been soundly, and deservedly, beaten at Turf Moor.

The good news is that this season’s newcomers appear to be in no mood to lie down and be trampled by the bully-boys.

Coyle himself made a sharp reference to the “one or two who have already written us off” in the aftermath of the United game, while Mick McCarthy’s Yorkshire burr never sounded more weary when he analysed the “condescending” verdicts passed on Wolverhampton Wanderers following their opening-day defeat to West Ham, which focused almost exclusively on their plucky spirit rather than their slick football. The victory at Wigan four days later, and even their fearless display at those new sky blue-bloods Manchester City on Saturday, provided the most pointed of ripostes.

The respite will be temporary, of course, and every defeat will herald another wave of airy dismissals from those who would like to adapt the Premier League’s fit and proper persons test for club owners to the teams themselves. Wanted: new team for exclusive, members-only competition — only well-moneyed metropolitans need apply.

Hopefully, the likes of Coyle, McCarthy and Alex McLeish, the Birmingham City manager, will treat such trash talk with the contempt it deserves. Instead, they should draw strength from the fact that, if last season proved anything, it is that Premier League newcomers no longer need harbour corrosive inferiority complexes.

West Bromwich Albion might have slipped beneath the waves, albeit in the effortlessly stylish manner of a dying swan, but there is inspiration to be drawn from Stoke, whose largely charmless football nonetheless proved magnificently effective, and, particularly, from Hull, who proved that being haplessly incapable of winning a football match for months at a time does not necessarily make you the worst team in the league, especially if you happen to be playing in a league that includes Newcastle United.

That, of course, is the other key point in the favour of this season’s trio of tyros: that established clubs are always finding new ways to undo years of good work in the space of a few mad months, either by sacking successful managers (Newcastle), not sacking unsuccessful managers (Middlesbrough) or determinedly closing their eyes and pretending everything is going swimmingly even as the water starts lapping around their ankles (Southampton, Charlton and too many others to mention).

This kind of rank incompetence is bad for the league’s marketing men, conscious of the difficulty of persuading half of Asia that they really cannot afford not to spend a December evening watching Birmingham versus Hull, but for the purists it is a time to rejoice.

Burnley’s football has already proved sufficiently polished to dispose of the champions and, yesterday, last season’s fifth-best side in Everton, while Wolves’ decision to cram as many talented under-25s into their squad not only gives them an obvious title for their season review DVD – Young, Gifted and Black Country – but should also win them the support of the neutrals as they attempt to erase the memory of their last sojourn at this level, which lasted just one painful year. Even Birmingham, despite being widely unloved, even by their own board members, can hardly be called cloggers.

For what it’s worth, I think at least two, and maybe even all three sides, can defy the odds and dodge the relegation bullet. Then, maybe, those pats on the head will be replaced by respectful slaps on the back. But don’t bet on it.