DID you enjoy the August Bank Holiday break? OK, the weather could have been better, but if you were among the Clarets fans that made it down to Ashton Gate on Saturday you wouldn’t have minded too much if the monsoon rains and a 100mph winds had hit the West Country.

That’s because Burnley came back with the precious spoils to record their first away win of the season in a 2-1 victory against old managerial acquaintance Steve Cotterill, which was just one of an astonishing nine wins on the road in the Championship that day.

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As reported in last week’s column, we (myself, Knock-off Nigel, Weedy and plain John Smith – our volunteer driver) had designated this trip a full weekender.

Smithy probably regretted that decision later that evening as it took just short of six hours to travel the full distance from Colne with no stops, with the sheer number of folk going away being the predictable problem.

However, it did give us all the chance to listen to our newest recruit Joey Barton on the appropriately-named TalkSport radio programme.

Now this man can chat! For a full three hours in fact, everything from the bottle-throwing incident at Turf Moor to the defence of his Twitter account when having a pop at the Burnley fans being well covered.

Suffice to say that if he plays as well as he talks, he will effortlessly become player of the season.

His Eric Cantona style of outspoken views have got him in hot water off the pitch, with the same mentality getting him yellow and red cards on it. But if he can channel that ‘enthusiasm’ he will be the goal-scoring acquisition we have needed for some time, although the dressing room will probably never be the same again.

We’ll see if he will make his feet do the talking as well as his mouth once he earns the right to pull on that claret shirt.

One that didn’t make the transition after eight short weeks at the club was Belgian striker Jelle Vossen who signed for Club Brugge on Monday. Having showed some decent touches, he ultimately lacked a killer instinct from the limited chances created, and has departed before we even came up with an appropriate chant for his name.