Burnley travel to Crystal Palace for an evening kick off on Saturday and it is difficult to find one Claret fan optimistic of picking up one solitary point.
Palace are second in the Premier League form table over the last couple of months, but the reality of the situation as far as Dyche's winless away wonders is that even if the Eagles were bottom of that table, it is still highly unlikely three points would be winging their way back to Turf Moor.
Burnley are quite simply woeful away from Fortress Turf Moor. There will need to be an a massive sea change in the Clarets fortune and performance if even one single, paltry point is to be added to their current thirty six point total.
For all the good Sean Dyche has done to get results at Turf Moor, he has been found horribly short in managing away fixtures. Whatever team talks, tactics and training he does before these away encounters, they must have been lost on his players a long time ago .
Burnley fans eyes and ears will be focused solely on the Swansea and Hull games in the hope that neither team pick any points. If they do, the pressure on the Clarets at home to West Bromwich Albion in the next home fixture at Turf Moor will be worse than immense.
The media are now strongly linking Sean Dyche's Championship winners of last season into being dragged in to a last day survival battle against relegation on the last day of the season at Turf Moor against West Ham United.
Survival has been on the cards for a few weeks and this is the only comfort I have gathered for watching the rubbish football ordered by Dyche. He looks like he will get away with it this season but the scale of discomfort felt by many fans like myself watching it cannot be underestimated.
You can only go so far watching and listening to the gravelly voiced, post match comments after away games. About the "reality of the situation", the "fine lines" and "decisions that don't go our way".
Palace are in the form of their life, have some very good players and a very vociferous, supportive home crowd. Luckily for Burnley, Palace play Tottenham on Thursday evening and will only get two full days rest before the Burnley game and also have a mini defensive crisis .
When Saturday night's dust settles, just keeping the same points difference between Hull and Swansea would be a big boost for Burnley Football Club.
If that is the case, it will inevitably say more about the failures of these two teams rather than the performance of the woeful travelling Clarets.
I expect though, the points difference will be much closer and in the immortal words of Sir Alex, "it really will be squeaky bum time" for the long suffering Clarets supporters whose early season optimism, like all newly promoted teams, knew no bounds.
This rather pessimistic match preview was written by and is the opinion of Michael Donnelly alias "The Donz". (TEC).
Source: DSG
