Scott Parker makes admission about Burnley's missed FA Cup opportunity following Preston North End defeat

The Clarets were favourites heading into Saturday’s fifth round tie against fellow Championship outfit Preston North End.

But Parker’s men dished up a miserable display to lose 3-0 at Deepdale, squandering the chance to reach the eighth time for only the second time in the last 22 years.

With a number of the Premier League’s bigger sides already out of the competition, Burnley may live to regret the opportunity to go 90 minutes away from a trip to Wembley.

“It definitely feels like a missed opportunity because we came into the tie wanting to win the game and go through,” Parker said.

“We didn't deserve to get anything from the game though. I thought we were short and it's not a game where I'm sitting here talking about the fine margins, because it wasn't really a game of fine margins.

“We were well worthy of coming out of here and not going through.”

With Parker opting to make nine changes to his side, it gave a number of his fringe players the opportunity to impress.

Vaclav Hladky, Oliver Sonne, Joe Worrall, Jonjo Shelvey, Manuel Benson and Jeremy Sarmiento were among the players to start, but all underwhelmed.

Parker, however, disagreed with the notion that a number of players failed to take their chance.

“I'm not sure that that was the case,” he said. “I wouldn't want to put that pressure on and certainly I didn't.

“These players who are playing have been brilliant throughout this year. There's players who have played X amount of league games. They've been in and around it.

“I don't think there's one out there starting - there may be a couple, new signings maybe in Oliver [Sonne] - but for the large part, everyone out there today have had a real impact in our league campaign and played a lot of minutes. We were just short.

“In professional sports, sometimes you can just have days where you're just a little bit short and of course, we need to go over it.”