'BURNLEYGATE' - Lessons to be learned? 8h JANUARY 2011

‘BURNLEYGATE’ – Lessons to be learned?

Now that the dust has settled on the events which I will always think of as ‘Burnleygate’ and we have made our customary third round exit from the FA Cup I wonder if it is time to reflect on the events of Thursday and Friday last and to ask whether any lessons might have been learned.

Let’s be honest – twenty five years ago none of it would have happened. A club in Burnley’s position would not have had a website on which to go public about their approach to another club’s manager. Even if such an approach had been made, perhaps via a discreet phone call, the chances of it being almost instantly known across the globe would have been as real as the non-existent website. In other words this was a thoroughly modern phenomenon, a twenty-first century football occurrence, an internet driven, technology-fuelled rumourfest of  hitherto (as far as Norwich City are concerned) unprecedented proportions. We can only imagine what would have gone on had access to the internet existed in the troubled Chase era!

Yes, I was certainly caught up in it. Checking every few minutes to see what the situation was. Has he gone? What’s he said? What’s the latest on the Burnley message boards? What are the bookies saying now? Thousands of Canary fans, I am sure, were doing the same. Sky Sports says this. Radio Norfolk reports that. Here’s some footage of St. Paul driving his car. Does he look a bit fed up? He must be going mustn’t he?  

And at the end of it all...False Alarm. He’s going nowhere. He never was. He’s always been happy here. There’s  a job to do. He loves the fans. Wes has signed a new contract.

So have we learned anything or do we have to go through all this again the very next time another club casts envious glances in the direction of the Norwich City dugout? Well I think we ought to just take stock. Perhaps this is the result of a fanbase getting just a little too close to its manager. The love affair with Lambert started almost from day one – certainly from home game one, when a side invigorated by the goal scoring introduction of a youthful, hungry Korey Smith thrashed Wycombe in the same August Carrow Road sunshine which had seen humiliation two weeks earlier.

And as the romance developed there were just so many wonderful dates, particularly when Paul took us away from home – to Stockport, Southend, Colchester, Walsall and Charlton. We grew to love each other. We sang it to him and he whispered it to us in interviews and gestured it to us at games. Then another girl (albeit one dressed in claret and blue) fluttered her eyelashes in Paul’s direction and like a jealous, insecure partner we panicked. He told us there was nothing to worry about (‘I have nothing to add to the club’s statement’) but we would not accept it.

We wanted him to tell us straight that he did not like the girl from the North West and we pushed and pushed until we got that assurance. then we went to bed happy. Should we actually have shown a little more trust? Should we have respected our man just a little more? Are we so insecure that we panic every time another girl looks at him?

OK I know I have laboured that analogy rather too much so I’ll leave it. But the point is that we love our manager and he knows it. We now have to accept that he is a potentially great gaffer who is destined for the top and as long as he takes us as far as he can along the way, then when the day comes that he moves on we should send him on his way with thanks and good wishes (even if it is with heavy hearts).

We all know, I think, that Paul Lambert is a pretty private man and he will not have enjoyed the events of the last few days at all. Let’s learn to respect him and his privacy. I sincerely hope that if media speculation such as we saw recently occurs again anytime soon I for one will be able to resist the temptation to get caught up in the frenzy.