WHAT do you get if you add together Leeds United Football Club, Ken Bates and Dennis Wise?

Well sadly, there are certain legal requirements which prevent the Lancashire Telegraph from printing what I really think the answer to that question might be.

But suffice to say that one response might run something along the lines of "not particularly loveable, actually."

Come on, let's be completely and utterly frank here. Who amongst us would not be anything other than thoroughly delighted to see Leeds United and their overpaid underachievers slumming it with the likes of Walsall, Hartlepool United and Swindon Town when season 2007-08 kicks off next August?

All of which makes it doubly unfortunate that the Clarets could not rouse themselves sufficiently to hammer what would have been a huge, and possibly decisive nail into the home side's Championship coffin.

Happily, the Yorkshire club are still in the bottom three. And with away trips to Southampton and Derby County in the pipeline, are a long way south of a town called Safety.

From Burnley's point of view, the game was a total washout. The Clarets couldn't muster a single shot on target in the entire 90 minutes to give their huge following something to shout about.

In fact, the only real positive to emerge from a disappointing afternoon was that the Championship table makes happier reading from a Burnley perspective.

Even if the Clarets fail to pick up another point for the remainder of the season, Leeds would still have to take seven from a possible nine to leapfrog Burnley. Not impossible, but not likely either.

Yet at a stroke, the Clarets could do away with all the complicated mathematical permutations this evening.

Should they record three points over Norwich City, they will (by virtue of their vastly superior goal difference) be unassailable.

One can only hope that Peter Grant's Canaries pitch up at Turf Moor this evening in the same state of mind as Plymouth Argyle did a couple of weeks back.

Ian Holloway's men showed a level of disinterest which bordered on the criminal that night, and Burnley exploited it superbly.

Like Argyle, City will come to Burnley this evening with not a tremendous amount to play for.

Will they really fancy a trip up here? With any luck, the answer to that question will be "no" and the last of any remaining pressure will be well and truly off.