‘This must be turning point’ - Charlie Austin

But the country’s top scorer Charlie Austin accepts Tuesday night was simply not good enough from the team as a whole, and that the 3-3 draw with Sheffield Wednesday must serve as a turning point in Burnley’s season.

Austin fired his second treble of the season to take his tally to 14 - having netted nine in his last five, and 20 in his last 19.

But after putting the Clarets ahead three times, three times the Owls fought back - twice within a minute - to earn a point.

Burnley have now let 10 points slip from winning positions so far this season - 10 points which would put them top of the Championship.

And ahead of tomorrow’s trip to in-form Crystal Palace, Austin admitted: “You need to score goals to win games, and at the moment we’re scoring goals, but you need to look at defending and keep some clean sheets.

“It’s frustrating, if you score goals you should be winning games.

“It might be good to watch, but it’s not to play in.

“We need to sort it out, and fast, and I think we will.

“We have great players in the squad - if we had won against Sheffield Wednesday we would have been six points off the top.

“That doesn’t sound too bad, so we need to go down to Palace and get a result.

“All the lads have pride and are all winners.

“We don’t go out there to give sloppy goals away or get a point, we want to win and get the three points.

“We want to be up at the top of the league, we want to get promotion as a football club.”

Last season, it took until the side were teetering on the edge of the bottom three in November, two goals down at Hull, before staging a fightback to win the game and mount a run of seven wins in 10.

Austin hopes for a similar change of fortunes: “This needs to be a turning point.

“We need to get this out of our system, and I think that’s what we will do after more hard work in training.

“Everyone needs a good kick, but that’s it, and we’ll look to put things into practice now.

“I’m gutted, the lads are gutted, it’s not good enough, and we know that.

“It’s easy to say that though, and we will work on it and sort it out.

“We just need to be better.”

And he took little consolation from his fine hat-trick: “I’m deflated, we’ve taken the lead three times and given sloppy goals away.

“Alright, the third goal was a good finish, but we’ve made it 3-2 late on and we need to do better.

“These things happen in football, but we need to cut out the mistakes and fast.

“We score goals as a team and defend as a team, the lads know that, it’s not just the back five, we all need to defend, chip in and do our bit.

“We just need to do it better.”

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