Nicky Hayen on Burnley’s winless streak and concerns over lack of goals

If Burnley are unable to register three points against Norwich City on Saturday, their long wait for a win will stretch to over 200 days.

While that streak obviously includes the off-season, the Clarets have still only won one league game since the end of October.

Despite taking on two League One sides in the Carabao Cup so far this season, Nicky Hayen’s side have still yet to register a victory - requiring penalties to edge past Notts County before being dumped out on spot kicks by Bradford City on Wednesday night.

When it was put to Hayen that Burnley are a team that has forgotten how to win, the Belgian replied: “Yes, it is and you just need sometimes one win to change it around.

“This is actually what we're looking for and we're working really hard every day to do it, but you have to reward yourself.

“We have moments, like also in the West Brom game, where we lacked the energy, the desire and even today you saw the desire in the duals. There was even much more desire [from Bradford] than us, but okay, that's also how they play.

“We want to play more like football, but I think we were fair in the duals. In the second ball, we were sharp, so we cannot complain about that.

“But at the end, the most important are the two boxes and we defended actually quite well.

“But then you said it yourself, I didn't see the stats, but 23 shots towards goal, then you have to score at least one or two.”

The big concern is that, despite all of those attempts on goal, Burnley are still finding goals hard to come by.

In fact, Zian Flemming - who continues to be strongly linked with a move away - is the only Burnley player to have found the back of the net so far this season, four games in.

When asked about how much of a concern that is, Hayen added: “That's the case at the moment.

“For me, it's important that we keep on giving confidence to everyone and keep on pushing them to a higher level on the training session and give them confidence. That's the most important.

“But like I said, we're still looking also how we can improve this squad in a good way, so we're sitting together with the management to make the right decisions.”

Despite Burnley lacking a real cutting edge, Hayen is confident that end product in the final third will arrive sooner rather than later.

“Yes, 100 per cent,” he said.

“I already said it, I'm not the first manager who was struggling at the start of the season. But it’s unfortunate because we wanted to change this as quickly as possible.

“We're still busy with players to come in who have even more goal-threatening than now. We want to push players, but also have more competition in the squad to push them to a higher level. That's our main objective at the moment.”