Eddie Howe takes responsibility for defeat

Leicester leapfrogged Howe’s side with a 4-0 win at the Walkers Stadium, as play-off ambitions took another severe hit.

Ahead of tonight’s return to the East Midlands at Nottingham Forest, Burnley are seven points adrift of Leeds in sixth place, with a game in hand, but on a run of one point from 15 – including three successive defeats.

Howe, having made four changes to face Ipswich, made another four, but didn’t get the required response.

Leicester led 1-0 at half-time courtesy of Diomansy Kamara’s goal, but after Paul Gallagher’s penalty doubled the advantage six minutes after the break, there was little resistance from Burnley, and Howe admitted: “We didn’t react fantastically well as a team, a few heads dropped.

“I’m disappointed with it. There’s no hiding the fact we’ve got to do better. I’ve got to do better. As manager I take responsibility, I’ve said that before.

“The buck stops with me and as a team, as individuals, everyone’s got to do better.

“I don’t cross the white line, but you look at everything and analyse everything you do. I’ll certainly do that – that’s part of the process.

“We’ve only got a couple of days now to prepare for another game, so it’s not long. But we need a response.”

Burnley had looked relatively comfortable defensively in the first half, Kamara’s moment of class apart, but again, they showed little sign of a cutting edge: “It was a very disappointing day. I thought we actually started quite brightly and had a couple of chances.

“We conceded a poor goal from our point of view in the first half, but still there wasn’t a great deal in it.

“The turning point was the second goal. As soon as that went in the game was over and we really struggled.

“I think they were by far the better team. At half-time I thought we were well in the game, but in the second half as soon as the second goal went in it was a tough afternoon for us after that.

“Leicester kept the ball pretty well and it became pretty hard to watch.

“We tried to get back to getting balls into the box.

“At times, especially in the first half, I felt we looked a threat. But the stuffing was knocked out of us with the second goal and after that it was a tough afternoon.

“We were beaten by the better team and we have to take it on the chin.”

And Howe accepts hopes of a play-off place are evaporating: “We’re running out of games aren’t we. We keep saying the same thing every week.

“It’s going to be incredibly difficult for us now I think.

“We need a win and we need a result to lift our confidence. I think the players are lacking a little bit of self-belief at the moment with the results that we’ve had, and days like Saturday don’t help.

“Confidence can change very quickly. All we need is something to kick-start us again and we’ll be fine.

“We still have some very good players within this team, but it’s a case of finding the right balance and just getting the lads going again.

“You look at it (on Saturday) and you think ‘We obviously didn’t get it right’.

“I would say we’d keep tweaking with it but we’ve obviously got to pick a team to try to get a win.

“I think once we get one win we’ll be fine.

“We’ve just lost our way slightly in the last few games.”