It’s make or break for Clarets - Barnes

With 40 days of the Premier League campaign remaining striker Ashley Barnes has claimed that it’s now ‘make or break’ for the Clarets.
This is make or break for us now. We need to stay in this league!This is make or break for us now. We need to stay in this league!
This is make or break for us now. We need to stay in this league!

Following defeat to Arsenal at Turf Moor, with Aaron Ramsey’s first half strike settling the fixture, Sean Dyche’s side remain two points adrift of safety with six games left.

“This is make or break for us now,” he said. “We need to stay in this league, for the fans, for the town, for ourselves.

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“We want to be playing in this league come next season and we will fight for every point possible now in the games remaining.”

That sequence starts with a trip to Goodison Park where Roberto Martinez’s Everton await.

The Clarets, who have won just once on the road this term, beating Stoke City at the Britannia in November, have scored just once in six outings.

Leading scorer Danny Ings hasn’t found the net since the loss against United at Old Trafford, strike partner Sam Vokes is still searching for his first Premier League goal while Barnes hasn’t netted in eight attempts.

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“I don’t think it’s a concern,” he said. “We need goals, they will come and our luck will change. We’ll go and turn someone over soon and it will be fine.

“Arsenal scored a goal from our mistake, we need to cut those out, because we get punished.

“That’s the league we’re in, if we make a mistake we get punished, if they make a mistake we need to make sure we punish them.

“We had our spells and we had some chances which we just couldn’t take. It just wouldn’t fall, we had a couple of those occasions. I think we were unlucky.”

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Having faced the division’s top eight in successive weeks, and with games against their relegation rivals on the horizon, Barnes added: “We take everything we can from these games.

“Against Arsenal it just didn’t happen for us. It’s difficult to take we’ve got to remain positive. We’ve got a job to do to cross that line.

“We can take a massive amount from those eight games. We’ve still got Leicester to play.

“We’ve got everyone around us. Stoke and Everton are safe, so hopefully we can fight and go and get something from them. Then it’s must win games against Leicester and Hull.

“We need to win those for sure. If we can take points along the way from the next couple of games we can see where are. We get cracking next week against Everton.”