Well, if Owen Coyle was looking for a rough guide as to what to expect in his new role as a Championship manager, then it was provided on Saturday.

Big, physical and workmanlike, Stoke City epitomised everything that is wrong with the second tier of the national game.

Dull, dour pragmatists, the Potters are anti-football.

And, sadly, they are not the exception that proves the rule.

Coyle's predecessor was often fond of telling us that the Championship had kicked on another base'.

Not in entertainment terms it hasn't.

All too frequently at this level, sides eschew craft for graft, favouring perspiration over inspiration. The beautiful game? I don't think so.

Of the sides that have visited Turf Moor this season, only Ipswich Town and Southampton have had an attractive and aesthetically pleasing take on the sport.

They get the ball on the deck and pass it to feet, rather than lumping it in the vaguer direction of the opposition goal and hoping they win the ensuing scrap.

So it was refreshing and encouraging to hear Owen Coyle at Thursday's press conference, telling the assembled media that he feels his side have an obligation to entertain.

"People are paying good money to be entertained on a Sarurday afternoon," said the Glasweigan.

"So we have to look to be entertaining." Amen to that.

Amen also to his proposed modus operandi. "I love a winger getting past a full-back and then getting a cross in, because everyone can see that it's exciting and that a goal is coming."

There was certainly evidence of this on Saturday, when Coyle could be seen on the touchline animatedly exhorting Kyle Lafferty to attack the space ahead of him.

"I have stressed to the players to be creative in the final third of the field," said Coyle after the game.

And there is certainly no shortage of flair in the current crop of Clarets. It just needs to be given its head.

Not for no reason is Wade Elliott towards the top of the Championship's assists table.

Alan Mahon, excellent on Saturday, certainly has an eye for a pass.

And although Robbie Blake can sometimes over-elaborate and self-indulge, he will, given time and space, kill the opposition with his vision and range of passing.

No-one imagines that Owen Coyle is about to turn Burnley into the Arsenal of the North.

Yet if his sides walk it how the manager talks it, there is every reason to be optimistic about the future at Turf Moor.