HAS there ever been a more season-defining minute than that witnessed at Turf Moor on Saturday afternoon?

For a fleeting moment Burnley were on the cusp of climbing out of the relegation zone and kick-starting their bid for survival. Fifty-nine seconds later and Jamie Vardy had kicked the trap-door to the Championship well and truly open.

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Vardy’s 60th minute strike wasn’t quite a knockout blow, but the Clarets are now sprawled on the canvass, gasping for air and struggling to get to their feet.

One goal in eight games, one win in 13, five points adrift of safety; it is becoming increasingly difficult for even the sunniest optimist to imagine that Turf Moor will be receiving Chelsea, Manchester City and Arsenal in the 2015/16 season.

Hard running and a sound framework are essential qualities in any team – particularly one with such modest resources as Burnley, but incorporated into that work ethic and strategy there has to be a way of carrying a genuine threat to other teams.

And, certainly in recent weeks, that threat simply hasn’t been seen enough – it’s as though we have been trying to negotiate our way to safety simply be containing the opposition.

Against Leicester, there was a marked absence of zip and urgency. Even as the last 20 minutes loomed and the Clarets should have been laying siege to the Foxes’ box, the build-up play was painfully slow and laboured.

It said it all, really, that Burnley’s best chance of getting back into the game came when Robert Huth drew the save of the match from Kasper Schmeichel, as he almost put through his own goal from Ben Mee’s speculative cross in the game’s dying minutes.

When we needed gung-ho, we got so-so.

All is not lost; not quite anyway.

As the relentlessly upbeat Sean Dyche was quick to observe in the post-match press call, “Leicester have just won four on the trot. With all due respect, if they can do it there’s no reason we can’t.”

A win at the Boleyn Ground in a few days’ time coupled with a handful of favourable results would put the Clarets right back into the picture with a quartet of games remaining.

But we are now entering the murky realms of ifs, buts and maybes; Sean Dyche’s men are no longer the masters of their own destiny.