Gascoigne fails to lift full house

Burnley 1 Bradford City 1

When he was a boy growing up in the barren Gateshead suburb of Dunston, Paul Gascoigne would dream of emulating George Best. Last night, he, like Best after Manchester United, began the drift down the divisions to become a brighter star in a smaller universe.

You trust that he will not end up like Best at Bournemouth, drinking pints of vodka and orange before matches. Gascoigne did his task well enough yesterday, although it would have raised a wry smile that in the six minutes he was not on the pitch, Burnley might have scored three times.

The talent may have seeped away but the charisma remains and yesterday Turf Moor was sold out for the first time this season to see Gazza make his debut on a night when sheets of rain swept over the old mill town. His first task, to put Lancastrian bottoms on claret-and-blue seats had been admirably fulfilled.

Since coming back to the domestic game, Gascoigne has usually shone when he knows he is the best player on the pitch, something that was no longer true, even at Goodison Park. However, for Everton he had dazzled against minor opposition and last night he appeared to relish the task of imposing himself against an ageing Bradford side which is disintegrating at an alarming rate.

This was a command performance. First, a free-kick which Alan Coombe pushed away at full stretch; then a pirouette here, a little shuffle into the box there. It was a sight better than his first game for Middlesbrough, an ineffectual substitute display against Chelsea in the 1998 League Cup final which was to prove sadly prophetic.

Even without him, Burnley would have been unquestionably superior and had Ian Moore enjoyed more luck or David Johnson finished more incisively, they might have cemented their victory long before half-time. As it was, Burnley had to settle for just the one goal before the interval as Ian Cox knocked down Glen Little's corner into Johnson's path and this time the striker, on loan from Nottingham Forest, managed to drive the ball into the roof of the net.

But for another superlative save from Coombe, Gascoigne would have scored his first goal for Burnley in the 63rd minute when another free-kick, struck from the left-hand edge of the area, almost curled past the keeper. It made up for a booking which Gascoigne had earned through a typically mistimed tackle on the equally venerable Stuart McCall.

However, as the half wore on, Gascoigne began to fade and Bradford came into their own. After three successive defeats and a draw with Rotherham, the Bantams' chairman, Geoffrey Richmond, had demanded an immediate upturn in results or he would "go to plan B and press the panic button". As Claus Jorgensen bundled Ashley Ward's knock-down over the line for his first Bradford goal with a dozen minutes left, it ensured the button in Richmond's office would remain unpressed for the time being at least.

Burnley: (3-5-2) Beresford; West, Cox, Thomas; Little (Blake, 61), Ball, Gascoigne (Payton, 84), Grant, Briscoe; Johnson (Maylett, 74), Moore. Subsitutes not used: Cook, Michopoulos (gk).

Bradford: (4-4-2) Coombe; Halle, Wetherall, Bower, Jacobs; Jorgensen, Lawrence, McCall, Jess (Whalley, 84); Cadamateri, Ward. Subsitutes not used: Grant, Standing, Carricondo, Worsnop (gk).

Referee: A Bates (Stoke-on-Trent).