With Wolverhampton Wanderers (a), Bournemouth (h), Cardiff City (a) and Huddersfield Town (h) next up for Burnley, the Clarets sit top of our Season Ticker for defence over the coming four Gameweeks.
All is not well at Turf Moor, however. A defence that performed so admirably and proved so popular among Fantasy bosses in 2017/18 that their goalkeeper and hitherto first-choice back four all rose to £5.0m in Fantasy Premier League this season have flattered to deceive.
Sean Dyche’s side have conceded as many goals after four league fixtures (nine) than they had after 12 matches of the previous campaign, offering little encouragement for those considering drafting in a Burnley defender for this quartet of upcoming encounters.
Stephen Ward and Matthew Lowton (£4.9m) were both dropped to the bench for the visit of Manchester United last weekend, with fatigue hardly a factor given that the full-back pair had both sat out the Thursday night encounter with Olympiakos.
Dyche’s comments after the match on Sunday acknowledged the repercussions of the Thursday/Sunday fixture turnaround but implied that Charlie Taylor (£4.5m) and Phil Bardsley‘s (£4.4m) inclusions at left-back and right-back respectively were merited on performance:
We’ve been trying to monitor the workload of the players, equally monitoring the ones who have laid down a little bit of a marker and done well.
Ben Mee (£5.0m) struggled against Romelu Lukaku, meanwhile, not getting close enough to the Belgian forward for either of his goals and perhaps being fortunate not to concede a penalty when lunging at the United striker in the second half.
Mee could soon find his place in jeopardy from Kevin Long (£4.3m) or Ben Gibson (£4.9m), the latter having missed the defeat to the Red Devils with a stomach problem.
With such doubt over personnel and a lack of confidence in the backline as a whole, Burnley’s defenders are not quite the attractive proposition they ought to be for this run of matches between Gameweeks 5 and 8.
The all-important goals conceded column aside, though, are Dyche’s side statistically performing any worse than they were in 2017/18? Members can read on for our assessment of the Clarets’ defence.
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