Breaking our Turf Moor hoodoo is more important than ever

Drew Heatley looks ahead to Saturday evening's game.

Every time a trip to Turf Moor approaches, I’m always surprised to read we haven’t won there since 1951 - even though I see that same stat every time.

Football throws up these quirks from time to time; you can’t change the narrative no matter how hard you try. And fate finds ways to trick you out of subverting the trend (Joe Bryan and Denis Odoi’s own-goal double, anyone?).

We approach our latest trip to this unhappy hunting ground on Saturday in a bit of an existential slump. Our run of seven losses in 10 is the worst we’ve endured under Marco Silva. Considering he’s been here close to five years, there’s a level of gratitude associated with this being the nadir of his reign, but his reluctance to sign a contract extension has led to a general feeling of unease and apathy around the club.

But then there’s Scott Parker a the helm of our opponents, helping us to remember what things were once like.

I’m reticent to slag off Parker too much. Yes, he was a bit cheeky in the way he maneuvered his way out of the club, but there’s no one who can truly say they were sad he left.

I still wonder if there is a decent coach in there, if he wasn’t so relentlessly negative in his approach to the beautiful game. Instead, he finds himself firmly ensconced in the managerial equivalent of the “Huckerby vortex” - too good for the Championship, not good enough for the Premier League (the Farke vortex?).

After storming the second tier with 100 points, conceding a mindblowing 16 goals and losing just twice, Burnley find themselves 19th in the top flight, eight points ahead of Wolves, who are enduring the joint-worst Premier League campaign of any side ever.

The Clarets have lost their last six, having won their previous two games before that slump - against fellow bottom-three dwellers Leeds and the aforementioned Wanderers. It shows that while they’re struggling, they definitely still have enough in their locker to continue our dismal run in Lancashire.

For us, this marks the start of a four-game run that will define the course of 2025/26. How do we fare against three sides below in Burnley, Nottingham Forest and West Ham? Can we progress in the League Cup against the holders on their own patch? And can we cope for 75% of these crucial fixtures without ALex Iwobi, Calvin Bassey and Samuel Chukwueze?

Thankfully, we at least have our Naija boys available this weekend. AFCON couldn’t have come at a worse time for Samu in particular, who has taken this side by the scruff of the neck of late.

As disappointing as this campaign has been, we have a 100% record against the sides we have faced below us so far, with home wins against Leeds and Wolves. Breaking our Turf Moor hoodoo would show that our ambitions lie beyond merely survival and put some daylight between us and the relegation zone, setting us up nicely for our cup quarter-final and another crunch game against Forest.

And who knows? Once we get this monkey off our back, perhaps we can shake off another other metaphorical ape and get Marco to put pen to paper.