‘Foot to the floor’: Burnley boss Scott Parker issues rallying call as sole focus turns to promotion

The Clarets crashed out of the FA Cup at the weekend after serving up a miserable display during their fifth round tie against Preston North End, succumbing to a 3-0 defeat at Deepdale.

It now leaves automatic promotion as the sole focus for Parker’s men, who are straight back on the horse in midweek with a long trip to South Wales to face Cardiff City.

With only 12 games remaining, it’s all about picking up enough points to finish inside that all important top two.

“That's us now, yeah,” Parker concurred. “That's exactly where we are. One focus now. We're not in any of these cup competitions no more. There's only one focus.

“Twelve games left now. Let's go and put our foot straight down to the floor and try and grind out as many points as we can to get us over this line. That's exactly what our aim is and that's exactly what we'll be doing.

“We're disappointed to be out of the cup, of course we are, but now let’s put our foot to the floor and let's see where we can take ourselves at the end of these next 12 games.”

While Burnley remain unbeaten in their last 21 league games, Saturday’s defeat was still a rarity - it was the first time they had lost since the start of November.

When asked if he expects his side to bounce back, Parker added: “Oh yeah, for sure.

“I've said it too many times. Of course, it's a young group, but they're a together group. They're a group that react constantly in the right way and that's nothing that I don't expect now from us.

“We'll go over this game but as quickly as this game is done, we'll draw a quick line with a permanent pen right underneath it and we'll come back, reboot, see what we've done wrong and make sure that doesn't happen again, certainly when we're playing in games like this.

Like I said, for the large part, we've been superb at that.”

Parker added: “I always judge a human being on adversity to be quite honest with you and these players know that too well.

“Since the minute I've walked in here, the real test of a character is when someone gets a little jab on the nose or someone needs a little bit of support and what's the reaction we're going to get.

“These players will be under no illusions of the reaction we need to bring now after one defeat and like you just said the number it is so we'll regroup.

“I know my players and I know they'll come back and they'll give everything like they've done for the majority of this year.”