Chris Sutton has backed Burnley to edge it as Burnley prepare to host Wolves on Sunday, a game that arrives with both clubs yet to register a win between them across 16 matches since Wolves beat Liverpool on 3 March.
The figure that frames the fixture is stark: neither Wolves nor Burnley have managed a single victory in their combined 16 games since that March 3 upset. Sutton, speaking ahead of the match, warned against cautious thinking. "The sensible thing to do here would be to go for a draw but I have got a predictions title to win so I need to take some risks," he said, and then added: "I am going to back Burnley to edge it."
Those two sentences from Sutton do the heavy lifting in a fixture defined by drought. Wolves arrive having not won an away league game all season, a stat that sits uneasily with the memory of their March victory over Liverpool. Burnley come off a valiant but losing performance against Arsenal on Monday — the club put up a decent fight and still fell short.
Context matters here. The empty-win column is not evenly shared. Wolves’ away struggles all season have left them vulnerable on the road, while Burnley’s recent form shows flashes of competitiveness even when results do not follow. The supplementary reporting around the game hinted at internal urgency: Rob Edwards tried to stir up his Wolves players before the match, and Burnley could finish bottom if they do not turn performances into points and pick up only a fourth win of the season.
That is where the tension sits. On paper, a side that beat Liverpool in March has demonstrated it can still produce high points. In practice, an entire season without an away league victory for Wolves points to deeper problems outside the occasional headline result. Sutton’s choice to back Burnley introduces another contradiction — the pundit rejects the safe outcome of a draw while naming the home team as his pick despite Burnley’s recent defeat.
Both clubs carry pressure into Sunday. For Wolves, the away-win drought is an obvious red flag: winning on the road has eluded them all season and the March upset has not translated into consistency. For Burnley, the immediate reality is turning performances into points; their match with Arsenal on Monday showed they can compete but not close games. Those twin pressures create a match that will tell observers more about which club can convert chance into momentum.
How the managers respond — the team selection, the early tactical tweaks, the way players handle the opening exchanges — will determine whether Sutton’s gamble looks prescient or premature. The simplest conclusion from the available facts is this: Wolves carry a symbolic high from March but have not taken a single away league win all season, while Burnley, even in defeat on Monday, have shown enough fight to suggest they are the likelier to break a run when they host this fixture.
Put bluntly, Sunday will not only end a run on the scoresheet; it will expose whether either club can turn isolated positives into sustained recovery. Sutton has staked his prediction on Burnley — now both teams must answer on the pitch.
