Burnley Fan View: Man City just too good in FA Cup loss

Burnley crashed out of the FA Cup despite holding a half-time lead at the Etihad, with the final score at 4-1. Despite this there are reasons to be proud of the players.

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We weren’t expecting to win the match, but it was a good opportunity to show our support for the players that have been so good in the league – 7,600 Clarets made the short trip down the M66 to Manchester and the city was alive with Burnley fans on Saturday morning.

City were heavy favourites before the match and their lineup was strong, with Aguero, Sane, Sterling and Silva all starting. Meanwhile Burnley made changes, with Tarkowski, Defour and Arfield all absent. I must say I agreed with the lineup selection from Dyche, it would have been risky to lose key players at this stage, even though we are very much safe in the Premier League. If we had less illustrious opponents I would have wanted us to go for broke.

Early on it was all City, as expected. The large pitch suits their creative players and they stroked the ball around mercilessly. There were few efforts on goal though in truth and we kept them at arms length quite well.

We had an early free kick that was headed across goal by former City prospect Ben Mee, but no striker could connect with it.

Then we had our chance. Stones was caught in possession and Ashley Barnes raced away towards goal. He isn’t blessed with great pace but his desire kept him ahead of the converging defenders. From where I was stood I thought it hit the side netting, but 7599 other Clarets roared as Ashley wheeled away to celebrate. We had broken the deadlock.

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City didn’t really give us much to think about between then and half time and we went in at the break ahead. I was still pretty sure we couldn’t hold on, but stranger things have happened.

Typically, they didn’t this time. City scored twice in a matter of minutes thanks to Sergio Aguero’s quick movement and that was that. Sane added a third and after a poor decision from Nick Pope, substitute Bernardo Silva converted.

Despite this the Burnley fans continued to cheer on their team, whilst the Man City fans sat politely in silence. It was sad to see how sterilised the City support were, they only got out of their seats to cheer the goals. In contrast I though the Burnley fans were very good. Even with no opposing fans to bounce off of, we kept the chants going right upto the final whistle. “We are the Longside, Burnley” chorused the mass of fans behind the goal, as the Burnley players trudged over to thank them for their support.

Man City were ridiculously good. They played the majority of the game in first gear and when they wanted to move up to second they were absolutely clinical. There is no shame in losing to a set of players this talented – they will beat plenty of other teams by that scoreline this season.

Still very proud to be a Claret and onto a very tough few weeks in the Premier League where we may find out if we have the gas to maintain a Europa League position.