WHEN Mark Hughes set out to make City one of the biggest draws in the Premier League - this isn't what he had in mind!

But five on the bounce means that City now have more deadlocks than Strangeways, even if their draws do tend to be more exciting than the average one-pointer.

It may come as light relief to Hughes and his frustrated troops that two of the next three Premier League challenges are against Liverpool and Chelsea, when the onus not to lose will be on the opposition.

At the moment, having the responsibility of being the team most likely to break the boring Big Four hegemony is resting heavily on Blue shoulders.

Orchestra

And yet, this dramatic slowing of the frantic pace with which City boldly began such a challenging season was inevitable.

That stunning start defied logic.

Hughes and his Arab paymasters had spent the summer adding virtuoso performers to the Eastlands orchestra, but it seemed highly unlikely that they would be in harmony from the first tap of the conductor's baton.

And yet there they were, making sweet music which was too overpowering for Blackburn, Wolves, Portsmouth and Arsenal - although even in those games, there were signs of defensive frailty and that the cement holding the side together was still wet.

Hughes maintained that the signing of good-quality players had made it so much easier for his side to gel, although you got the feeling that he knew it was all too good to be true and that there would be severe tests ahead.

The manager, naturally, is a "glass half full" type. His side has lost one out of 11, and that was a super-late, single-goal defeat by the reigning champions on their own patch.

If this season had run in reverse order, with five draws to begin, followed by five wins and a defeat in the last six, everyone would have been over the Blue moon.

And yet, as it stands, the squandering of two gimme points against the side which had held the worst away record in the league has made everyone fidgety and restless as they head into the international break.

Nature

Perhaps it was inevitable that City would bring the Clarets' dismal run of five crushing defeats from five shuddering to a halt.

It was the nature of it that was so disappointing. Executive chairman Garry Cook has vowed to expunge the term "typical City" from the football vocabulary - as long as they continue to defend in this manner, he faces an uphill struggle.

But, dodgy results like this one notwithstanding, Hughes and his staff have made a decent fist of what was always going to be a tough ask.

The owners have made it clear that they want success pretty quickly, and have provided the funds with which to secure it. That required an overhaul of the squad, something which always takes time to do effectively.

Across the city, it took Alex Ferguson four seasons to turn a decent United side into one ready to challenge for trophies.

Hughes, who played an integral part in that evolution, is trying to pull off a revolution at City, by drastically rebuilding a team and at the same time picking up results which will keep them in touch with the Champions League places and pursuing cup success.

Set-backs, like this one against Burnley are bound to happen when you are trying to pull off such a difficult trick.

And Hughes is right to point to collective responsibility for that failure. Finger-pointing within the camp is of no use to anyone other than rival clubs.

But at times, City's defending was awful, subject to a failure as a unit and as individuals.

A large part of the problem was that the left-hand side of the defence suffered most of the malfunctions, with Wayne Bridge and Joleon Lescott having major off-days. Bridge is an exciting sight when he turns on the turbos in forward positions, and attacking full-backs is a big part of City's game.

But there is a time to go, and a time to stay, and against Burnley his judgment was lacking too often.

Lescott looks like a man burdened by that £24m price tag, and he could easily have turned a 3-3 draw into a defeat with a half-hearted attempt to keep out David Nugent late in the game which forced Toure to take drastic interceptive action.

Shambolic

He was a little unfortunate to concede the penalty for the first goal, but was part of a shambolic piece of collective non-defending which teed up the second for Steven Fletcher.

City roared back, and it was a shame that their thrilling comeback did not remain the talking point of the match.

It was more remarkable because there were some ordinary performances throughout the team, not least from players who earlier in the season had been the mainstays, such as Gareth Barry and Emmanuel Adebayor.

Shaun Wright-Phillips was the brightest spark, taunting and teasing his former teammate Stephen Jordan, and introducing a ray of hope by firing in a shot which took a deflection off the Clarets' left-back to beat Brian Jensen.

Lescott redeemed himself in the opposition penalty area by stretching out a leg to hook Barry's free-kick across goal for Toure to finish for the equaliser.

And three minutes later Craig Bellamy - another whose sizzling form has spluttered slightly of late - finished clincially after Stevie Ireland's neat interception and pass to Wright-Phillips had prompted a smart pull-back from the little winger.

It appeared that the Blues had papered over the cracks at the back, only for the Polyfilla to fall out with three minutes to go - Bridge hashing a header to Nugent and the defence watching as Burnley constructed a simple leveller.