Verdict: Wolves defeat painfully fitting end to Burnley’s year of home misery

An entire year of misery.

By the time Sunday comes around, a whole 12 months will have passed since Burnley last won a home league game.

October 18, 2025, a 2-0 victory against Leeds United that moved Scott Parker’s then side out of the Premier League relegation zone.

Since then, it’s been nothing but pain.

Twenty-one league games at Turf Moor have come and gone without a victory. There’s been 11 defeats and 10 draws. Thirty-seven goals conceded, 21 scored.

The Clarets now have the second longest winless home run in the entirety of English Football League history. Sheffield Wednesday, beset by financial and off-the-field chaos last season, hold that particular record with 23, which is now just two games away.

To illustrate the change that has occurred since Burnley’s last win, Kyle Walker, Josh Cullen and Jacob Bruun Larsen are the only three players still with the club that started that day.

But the constant and seemingly never-ending churn of players is just one of several factors behind Burnley’s demise, which has been a perfect storm of chaos.

It’s no wonder supporters are angry, fed up and starting to vent. They’ve actually been incredibly patient up to this point, despite the previous protestations of chairman Alan Pace, who unwisely labelled them as “three-year-olds having a temper tantrum” back in February.

For context, at the time of those comments, Burnley hadn’t won a league game in 16 attempts.

Nicky Hayen, you’d imagine, will surely fall on his sword. If not this week, then next, or the one after that. The writing is on the wall. It can’t go on like this, as Mick McCarthy was once told.

But will the Belgian’s removal solve all of the Clarets’ ills? Absolutely not. This is a club in freefall.

It almost feels churlish to be discussing the manager’s position, tactics, team selection and so on when there’s far more significant issues at play.

These woes aren’t just the result of a poor pre-season, a delayed managerial appointment, the late sacking of the previous boss, a poor transfer window or, as I say, how the team is set up on the pitch. They’re the consequence of years of poor decision-making that is now coming to a head. All at once, painfully and in clear daylight for the whole world to see.

The problem? It doesn’t feel like it’s going to get any better soon. This could well be just the tipping point, with talk of protest now doing the rounds.

It’s not long until Blackburn Rovers rock up at the Turf and you dread to think what the reaction will be if that long unbeaten run goes south.

And yet, for 35 minutes, this was better from Burnley. Their first-half performance was arguably their best of the season, certainly at home (although, let’s face it, there’s not been much competition).

But, in usual Burnley fashion, they still found a way to find a way to stain what had been a really encouraging start to the game, which saw them take a deserved lead through Jamie Vardy’s first goal for the club.

It was an excellent team goal, too, with Vardy producing a trademark low finish across the keeper after good build-up play, from back to front, involving Igor Julio, Lucas Pires and Jacob Bruun Larsen, who played that all-important killer pass.

But this is Burnley, or the new iteration at least. They must find a way to self-destruct and shoot themselves in the foot.

A one-goal half-time lead would have been the least Hayen’s side deserved for their efforts, but they didn’t even get to enjoy that.

No, Kyle Walker - one of the most decorated English footballers out there - produced an inexplicable, basic mistake to gift Wolves an equaliser with what was their first shot on target.

It was a well-taken first-time finish from Fer Lopez, in fairness, but the chance should never have presented itself to him in the first place. Even Hjalmar Ekdal had the opportunity to clear his lines before Walker bizarrely tried to cut inside just outside his own box, leading him to being immediately dispossessed.

He knew how bad a mistake it was, of course he did. The problem is, it keeps happening. Time and time again.

That changed the entire dynamic of the game and, during the second-half, Burnley never really got going.

That’s another big problem. As soon as the Clarets suffer any sort of adversity, they simply wilt. Losing 12 points from winning positions in just 11 games is a sure sign of a brittle mentality.

That’s why I don’t see this being a quick fix, why I don’t see there being a huge transformation with a change of manager. This is an entire psyche that now seeps throughout the squad.

That’s not to say Hayen should keep his job. As he admits himself it would be “normal” for someone in his position - with one win to his name in 11 games - to be axed. But just don’t expect a sacking to be the magic solution, that’s all I’m saying.

But back to the game, while Burnley lost much of the flow, structure and patterns of play that had made their first-half display so promising, it wasn’t like Wolves were any great shakes themselves. It felt like the game would simply peter out.

But the hosts had other ideas, gift-wrapping Wolves the three points 18 minutes from time when another basic individual mistake, this time from Igor, saw Tawanda Chirewa score the winner with literally his first touches of the ball since coming off the bench. You couldn’t write it.

As was also the case against Charlton in midweek, Gregoire Coudert should have done a lot better, somehow allowing the ball to squirm through his hands, up towards goal where it glanced off the underside of the crossbar and in.

Whether it’s Coudert or Max Weiss, Burnley simply don’t have a goalkeeper capable of saving enough shots. It’s brutal, but the numbers don’t lie.

The era of Tom Heaton, Nick Pope, Joe Hart, James Trafford and so on feels a long time ago now, doesn’t it? Heck, even the lesser-seen Vaclav Hladky would be a far safer pair of hands.

By that point, what happened on the pitch was pretty immaterial, if we’re being honest. A “Pace out” banner was unfurled in the Cricket Field Stand, despite the best efforts of stewards who had clearly been instructed to take it down ASAP.

But there was nothing they could do to stop the “Alan Pace, get out of our club” chant that rang around Turf Moor, alongside others that aren’t as repeatable.

Clearly, all is not well and it doesn’t feel as though it’s going to get better any time soon.