Burnley's battle for goals

Burnley's biggest problem under Scott Parker is as clear as it is costly: they simply don't create enough. That's what the stats say, and unless that changes quickly, their battle against relegation will only get steeper.

Fifteen games into the season, the Clarets sit 19th in the Premier League with just three wins, and while they remain only five points from safety, the underlying numbers paint a picture of a side struggling to generate the sort of attacking threat needed to climb out of trouble.

Expected goals (xG) suggest Burnley should have scored slightly more than they have. They rank third in the league for the gap between goals and xG, meaning they are underperforming relative to the chances they create. But the deeper issue is that those chances arrive far too infrequently. A team can survive cold finishing spells; it cannot survive a lack of service.

Across almost every creative metric, Burnley sit at or near the bottom of the division. Their shot-creating actions per 90 minutes - the number of attacking moves that lead to a shot - stands at just 14.40, the lowest in the Premier League. Even Wolves, who rank 19th in that category and are rock bottom in the Premier League, produce 16.43. That gulf might appear narrow, but over the course of 90 minutes, and then a season, it becomes decisive.

The problem starts further back. Burnley rank 18th for passes into the final third (22.2 per match), often struggling to progress the ball high enough up the pitch to sustain pressure. Without that territorial foothold, Parker's side are too frequently forced backwards or wide, rarely managing the sort of central combinations that trouble well-organised Premier League defences.

When they do reach dangerous areas, the final ball is missing far too often. They are 20th for key passes - those that directly lead to a shot – at just 5.93 per game. Only a handful of Burnley's attacking sequences end with anything resembling a chance, putting enormous pressure on forwards who are already feeding on scraps.

Technical execution has also played a part. The Clarets sit 19th in the league for miscontrols, a measure of how often players fail to properly bring the ball under control. In isolation, individual errors like these seem minor; in aggregate, they slow attacks, kill transitions, and allow opponents to reset their shape. For a team that already struggles to create, such wastefulness is doubly damaging.

Burnley do not lack effort, organisation or defensive discipline; what they lack is sustained, repeatable attacking patterns capable of producing shots, chances and goals.

The platform is there, the gap to safety is small, the season is long, and performances have shown signs of improvement, but the margins are unforgiving.

To escape relegation, Burnley don't just need to be more clinical. They need to give themselves far more opportunities to be.