Josh Cullen comes to defence of Burnley's Aro Muric following costly mistake during Everton defeat

Burnley were beaten 1-0 at Goodison Park on Saturday in a game ultimately decided by Dominic Calvert-Lewin’s freak goal on the stroke of half-time.

Muric, looking to play out from the back, saw his attempted clearance charged down by the Everton striker, resulting in the ball looping over his head and into the back of his empty net.

The Kosovan has been a revelation since coming into the side in March, with his distribution out from the back making a big difference. But on this occasion it went against his side.

Despite that, Cullen has refused to pin any blame on the Burnley keeper.

“We never blame any individual,” he told Clarets+. “Aro has been magnificent since he’s come back in and saved us a lot more goals than he’s cost us.

“That’s the way we want him to play. He helps us so much when he plays with that courage and bravery.

“Unfortunately one has not gone his way but we’ll never single anyone out. We can’t just look at one goal we’ve conceded, we need to look at everything as a team because there are other parts of our game where we probably could have done better to get a result.”

Cullen otherwise felt that Burnley played well, but in the decisive moments they were found wanting.

“We’re obviously disappointed,” the 28-year-old added. “Key moments didn’t go in our favour, but we have to pick ourselves up and go again.

“When you come to places like this you know you’re always going to have to weather a bit of a storm at the start of the game, but we kept the crowd quiet and started to impose ourselves on the game.

“If you look at the game as a whole, we probably dominated the majority of it but, as we’ve said after a lot of games this season, it’s just key moments that it’s come down to that has cost us.”

For the seventh time this season, the Clarets ended a game with 10 men after Dara O’Shea was shown a straight red for a foul on Dwight McNeil.

Cullen felt the dismissal was harsh, with McNeil pouncing on O’Shea’s poor control well away from the Burnley goal.

Referee Michael Oliver, deeming the foul to have denied McNeil a goalscoring opportunity, went straight to his top pocket to send O’Shea back to the changing room.

Cullen felt it was ultimately yet another officiating call that has gone against the Clarets this season.

“I haven’t seen it back but initially I thought it was harsh,” he said. I thought he was a long way from goal. Obviously the lads are breaking their necks to get back as well and cover.

“Again, I haven’t seen it back so I’m not sure if this is right or wrong, but I’m not sure he would have got the ball anyway.

“But it’s one that has gone against us.”