'Disappointed' Scott Parker makes Burnley admission following Cardiff City cup humbling
A “disappointed” Scott Parker admits his Burnley side got exactly what they deserved during their cup humbling at the hands of League One Cardiff City.
The Clarets, who made all 11 changes to their side, paid the price for an abject first 45 minutes, which saw them trail 2-0 at the interval.
While the hosts fought back in the second-half, halving the deficit through Zian Flemming, it still wasn’t enough to avoid crashing out of the Carabao Cup at the third round stage.
“I'm really disappointed,” Parker said.
“Firstly, I wanted to come here and get a result and keep us in the cup, but that's not happened so I'm disappointed with that.
“I'm disappointed overall with the performance, especially the first-half, I thought we were way short of where we needed to be in every aspect of that game really.
“We’re facing a good side that are doing very, very well. But there were some tactical things first-half, but as well as that I just felt there were generally a lot of things that we were really short on - intensity, duels, opening up big spaces for the team. With the ball we were sloppy at times and pretty slow in the way we played.
“We gave ourselves an absolute mountain to climb going in at half-time at 2-0. There was an improvement in the second-half, but after how bad the first-half was that wasn't a lot to ask. I think you'd always see a bit of an improvement.
“We have some really good chances in the second-half to maybe bring the game back to us at 2-2. I think it would probably be unfair of me to say that we were probably worthy of that tonight because I don't think we were. I think it was probably a fair result over the course of it.”
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When asked how much of a surprise Burnley’s first-half display was, Parker added: “I just thought the fundamentals, the basics, the fundamentals of our game, we were just way short.
“The standards that we've set and just the habits and basics of our game, we just fell way short and the game runs away from us.
“If you haven't got that as a foothold and as a foundation, every game can be very, very difficult. That's where our problem lied in the first-half.
“The starting base for any team is those foundations. After that you can start layering. We lost those foundations a little bit.
“Just in terms of our general duels, in terms of the way we approached certain things, we were just a little, little bit short. I think there was a willingness there for sure, but certainly we just were short.”
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