James Tarkowski relishing opportunity to impress

The 24-year-old was introduced at the interval in the 2-0 loss against Manchester United at Turf Moor once team mate Ben Mee was withdrawn with a shin injury.

The former Brentford man has made 20 appearances for Burnley this term but only a handful of those, largely in the FA Cup, have been at centre back.

“It was nice to be out there,” he said. “I felt a little bit rusty but I guess that’s to be expected having not played at centre half for a while. I look forward to getting a few more minutes before the end of the season.”

The Clarets were uncharacteristically second best on home soil as first half goals from Anthony Martial and Wayne Rooney decided the fixture.

After the visitors extended their unbeaten run to 23 games, Tarkowski said: “United came here, they’re a team full of confidence, so we needed to hold out a bit longer to make them a bit nervy, because they need the wins at the moment, but a couple of goals in the first half set us back.

“We still stuck in there with a fairly decent performance but it wasn’t perfect because we obviously didn’t get any points at the end of the day.

“They are a team full of high quality players and they’re in really good form. We come in to games expecting to get something from them, whether it’s a point or a win, we’re always looking to do that. The goals in the first half just set us back.”

He added: “The first one was from a counter attack and it’s not often we get done like that. The second one is more of a fluke than any real quality so from our point of view we’d rather they put it in the top corner from 30 yards out where you can just hold your hands up when they get a bit of luck. With a counter attack it’s a bit harder to take.

“We’re confident of taking on any team, especially here. Even with United and Spurs coming here we still fancied ourselves. Other teams have been here and we’ve taken points off them like Liverpool and Chelsea. We do fancy ourselves against most teams. We’re just disappointed about today but we can’t get too down about it because we’ve got four big games to come.”