THE little lad who sat across from me on the Supporters Club coach on Tuesday night couldn't have been more than four years old. But if you'd seen his face it would have broken your heart, writes Stephen Cummings

The look of disconsolate disappointment etched on the youngster's face spoke volumes. It mirrored perfectly the downbeat, post-match mood of those other Clarets who had travelled en masse to Shrewsbury to roar their heroes on to victory.

As our coach pulled out of a Gay Meadow car park densely packed with vehicles from Burnley, I cast a last glance back at the ground. A couple of hours previously, upwards of 2,000 Clarets fans had shoe-horned themselves into the Station End. They had been anticipating a display bristling with verve, passion and elan. Following on from Burnley's heroic displays at Blackpool, Brentford and Walsall, these hopes were, not unreasonably, high.

By 9.30pm a depressing sense of deja-vu had descended on the travelling throng. Once again we had visited a team earmarked for relegation. Once again we had gift-wrapped them the three points.

Burnley's ongoing inability to teach the division's dunces a footballing lesson, may yet cost us dear in our bid to secure a play-off berth. Looking at the points the Clarets have donated to the basement teams this season is enough to make the most passionate supporter's claret and blue blood run stone cold.

On foreign soil Burnley have succumbed to both Peterborough United and this season's joke team, Rotherham United. Worse still is that the Clarets have suffered the ignominy of being mugged both home and away by perennial relegation dodgers York City and now Shrewsbury Town. (Worryingly, we have yet to visit Wycombe Wanderers, and Rotherham might well be licking their lips in anticipation of a possible three-point return when they visit Turf Moor in a fortnight).

In theory, Burnley have thus let slip 18 points which may have been theirs. Even if the Clarets had emerged from these scraps with just three wins from the six fixtures, they would currently be occupying the second automatic promotion slot with 69 points.

So what's the problem? How is it that a club aspiring to play with the cream of the Football League are incapable of firing off Division Two's cannon-fodder? I don't know, but isn't it about time that supporters like the four-year-old lad from Tuesday night were given some answers?

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.