Burnley boss Sean Dyche's thoughts on the defeat at West Ham and the way forward for his goal-shy strikers

Burnley slipped to a third defeat in four games at West Ham, all by a solitary goal, and his side have now failed to score in six of their last seven away games.

Indeed, they only have nine in 17 Premier League games in total, the joint-lowest tally with bottom side Sheffield United.

But, having found a way to pick up results, having claimed only two points from their first eight games, to have 14 from the next nine, Dyche will turn his attention to getting his playersb creating more chances and scoring more goals.

Chris Wood has scored three in 21 games this season, and Ashley Barnes one in 16, while Jay Rodriguez is without a goal in 19 appearances, and Matej Vydra - who has three goals in the cups - has not found the net in 21 Premier League appearances, and has only two in 39, albeit predominantly off the bench.

Dyche said: "You can work on the training ground, but often strikers will tell you, sometimes they find a goal, sometimes a lucky one, however it comes, and it just clicks again.

"We want to speed that process up obviously, the idea of coaching is to try and speed that situation up.

"We know the four players can operate, we think there's a nice mix of how we can operate with two strikers, but none of them are quite there at the moment.

"It's almost the freedom to score a goal, that needs to flow back into them, because sometimes you get a bit uptight and you're not making the movements or runs you normally would when you're free flowing and scoring goals.

"It's enough coaching and pressure on them to push them, and finding that balance to allow them to play naturally as well."

Dyche believes in the system that has served him and the club so well, and the players who have done their jobs for a long period of time, with Wood and Barnes earning that trust.

There is much debate about whether the time has come to search for an alternative pairing, but Dyche added: "It is not about belief in who is playing, it is belief in what we do.

"I have belief in what we do because history shows us a true picture of how we operate and how we change the way we operate to make sure we get the right results.

"After eight games we had two points, and now if you look at the points tally and the way we have operated, and you go 'yeah we have been effective'.

"The challenge is now can we be more effective because we want to get more points and wins.

"Defensively, generally we have been solid but it is now about operating better in the final third no matter who is playing."

That also includes the service, mostly from wide areas, and Robbie Brady and Johann Berg Gudmundsson are playing their way back to form and full match fitness, while Dwight McNeil is just back in contention after a long run of starts was halted by injury: "I thought there was a lot of creativity, especially from Dwight when he came on.

"I thought Johann put such a big shift in against Man United that he just looked a bit quiet and fatigued so that was a tactical change.

"Robbie is searching. The only question I have made of our wide players is to get to the far post in attacking situations.

"There is a lot of things that are right about the team at the moment but inevitably you have got to find the margins which we have done many times.

"It is very rare we dominate games with loads of goals because games are tight but we often get on the right side of them.

"We are close but we have to make sure we do it rather than waiting for it to happen."

And on the game as whole, Dyche was disappointed with a poor goal to concede, although he felt his centre backs performed well: "It was a softer goal than usual for us, but I'm not going to over-question our centre halves today because I thought they were excellent.

"Ben (Mee)'s so honest, he tries to head and clear everything and just got a nick on it, which kept their player onside, and maybe it could have been communicated a bit earlier from Tarky (James Tarkowski) and he gets a clear header.

"They didn't really have too many other chances, apart from at the end when we were really going for it.

"It's just finding the detail in the front third, because there was a lot of good play.

"It's rare you go away in the Premier League and have as much ball as we had today, we kept it well at times and operated in a good manner at times, but we couldn't find the killer moment, and that's a question mark of our season so far.

"In balance, after eight games we had two points, and now we are where we are.

"We have quite obviously made a lot of progress, it's how much we can take on from here. I said to the players, what gets you there, doesn't get you there, so therefore we have to keep layering up and keep adding to performances.

"There were a lot of good things today, but you come away with nothing."