Burnley 0 Manchester City 3

CHRIS Waddle's aim is to get Burnley into the First Division, writes TONY DEWHURST. It is to be hoped that if he does, Manchester City are no longer there.

As an exercise in assessing the readiness of his team ahead of the big kick-off at Watford on Saturday, this encounter yielded little.

What is there to assess when your team doesn't have the ball?

This was certainly the case in the first half, a half dominated by City and especially the hypnotic skills of Georgi Kinkladze who, if he was a conductor, would probably seek to play every instrument in the orchestra.

City's £3m signing, Lee Bradbury, contributed heavily to Burnley's woes too, scoring two minutes into his debut, adding another five minutes later and remaining menacing throughout.

So tight was City's grip that we even had Kinkladze doing his version of the Riverdance on the sideline while surrounded by three Burnley players and an Uwe Rosler bicycle kick on the half hour that wasn't far wide.

Burnley's emergence in the second half, when they at least made a match of it, only served notice of how strangled they had been in the first.

But it also highlighted the plight of being without Andy Cooke for three games at the start of the season for a questionable sending off against Notts County at the end of last season.

He was a threat when introduced alongside three other subs at the beginning of the second period, his ability to hold up the ball and harass defenders reminiscent of compatriot Mark Hughes. His general awareness should not be underestimated either, an example of which came when he turned sharply and slipped a perfect ball to Richard Huxford who was probably the wrong man in the right place.

The wing back's shot from the right of the box should have at least tested Martyn Margetson but it sailed wide.

Another sharp turn yielded a shot for Cooke from the edge of the area which went wayward, he failed by inches to meet a David Eyres cross with his head and he claimed a penalty when hauled over by David Morley in the dying moments.

He also missed it and, therefore, Waddle had few reasons to be pleased at the end of the game.

"We didn't start well - for the first 20 minutes we were very poor," he said, after making his Turf Moor bow at the start of the second half.

"We tried to play a similar game to Thursday (when Gremio of Brazil were defeated 1-0) but we conceded three early goals and you never plan for that.

"I think we were missing something - energy or desire - and just never got into it.

"It will be a long week for the lads next week. There will be a lot of work to be put in and we'll be training every day."

If there was solace to be taken from Saturday, it came from Frank Clark, the City manager, who had anticipated this match being the toughest of his team's pre-season build-up.

"Burnley are a club with enormous potential in the Second Division," he said before revealing that his only recurring nightmare involves Waddle and the time he turned the future England international down while on trial at Leyton Orient.

"I have a lot of time for Chris. He's a very level-headed fella.

"He has good people around him and I've been impressed by the things he's been saying.

"I think he and Burnley will do well."

They can only do better than Saturday when, if it was a cricket match, the stumps would have been removed to avoid further embarrassment. Kinkladze started the embarrassment with a deft chip that caught the home defence flat-footed and paved the way for Bradbury to fire his angled shot beyond Marlon Beresford after just 92 seconds.

Then Beresford errored badly in trying to coax Steve Blatherwick's backpass into the penalty area where he could pick it up.

Bradbury nipped in and rolled the ball into the empty net.

Glen Little tried to hatch something for the Clarets off a one-two with David Eyres but his shot was saved by saved by Margetson and knocked over by Tony Vaughan.

But City effectively finished it when Kevin Horlock's rasping 25-yard drive rebounded off the underside of the crossbar and into the path of Kit Symons who headed home number three.

Kinkladze set up Rosler on the right and the German beat Beresford but his shot brushed the paint off the wrong side of the bar.

Then the Georgian genius wrongfooted everybody with a free kick from the left that, instead of being floated to the middle, was direct at the near post and missed narrowly.

Burnley replied through Chris Vinnicombe's cross from the left but Paul Barnes' header had nothing on it.

At the other end, Bradbury was denied a hat-trick with Beresford's acrobatic save, the Burnley keeper remaining a commanding figure despite the earlier mishap.

Waddle could not be the commanding figure to inspire a second half setback, but Burnley saw more of the ball.

Sadly, they failed to do consistently constructive things with it and will be hoping to fare better next Saturday when City and Kinkladze, thankfully, should be doing cruel things to Portsmouth instead.

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