Defender talks of his side’s struggle to emerge from their Europa League ‘hangover’ and why Manchester City should expect a tough game on Saturday Ben Mee is talking hangovers. Not the pounding kind induced by a night on the sauce. Rather the lingering deflation which can anchor the mood when things have not worked out as envisaged, a sense of anticlimax with which Burnley’s captain is battling. His team’s seventh-place finish last season, their best in 44 years, had carried the promise of Europa League football. Yet, having squeezed beyond Aberdeen and Istanbul Basaksehir, they were cast out in the play-off round by Olympiakos with the group stage tantalisingly close. Mee played four of the six-match qualification campaign but could be forgiven if his overriding memory was of being spat at by locals in Piraeus as he sat behind the dugout at the Georgios Karaiskakis Stadium. Or the bedlam backstage at half-time in that first leg, all Greek temper tantrums in the tunnel with the tie 1-1 and the visitors holding the upper hand. Continue reading...
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