Turf Moor will host a meeting of teams with their minds on bigger occasions to come. City host Liverpool next weekend and Atlético Madrid in between while Burnley are about to start the key week of their season, featuring games against Everton and Norwich. Given those fixtures, and the fact they have lost their last nine matches against Manchester City by an aggregate score of 32-1, it is unlikely Sean Dyche will risk any player’s fitness for this one. This means Ben Mee will likely miss out and Kevin Long, who has spent 1,710 Premier League minutes on the bench this season and not a single one on the pitch, making his first senior appearance of any sort since last February. Back then, Long signed a new contract, started against Fulham and merrily declared “the manager here likes me”.