Sour grapes from bitter Leicester chief

The Foxes twice led the Clarets, with goals from Jeff Schlupp and Rayid Mahrez, only for Michael Kightly and Ross Wallace - with the latest goal scored in the Premier League so far this season - to strike back.

And Wallace’s 96th-minute leveller left Pearson with a case of sour grapes, having failed to beat a Burnley team without Danny Ings, Sam Vokes, Dean Marney, David Jones, Nathaniel Chalobah and Matt Taylor.

Pearson said: “It’s two points dropped for us really because we’ve been the side that has tried to be attack minded throughout.

“I could be critical if I wanted of our own players in terms of not maximising our own attacking situations enough, but ultimately we’ve been pegged back right at the death and it’s not given us a chance to respond.

“It’s disappointing but I am pleased with how the players have tried to go about it again. We’ve not quite showed the clinical finish we’ve had in other games but to score two goals at home again is a good indicator.

“Of course what we’ve got to do now is stop the goals at the other end, and unfortunately for us at the moment we seem to be giving away too many set plays.”

Pearson added: “I don’t see anything to suggest they put us under immense pressure. I don’t feel that we were threatened too much by them in the whole game. The two goals that they scored were pretty much a surprise at both times. That shows you that what we have to do is be more clinical and we have shown it for long periods of the first period of the season.

“In a game that we’ve dominated for long periods, we’ve not got the result that we deserved. You’ve got to give them a bit of credit. They scored two goals against us but I certainly wouldn’t buy into any argument that we shouldn’t have won the game. We should have won the game.”

Pearson’s side were promoted as Championship winners last season, with Burnley runners-up, and he feels his side - backed by billionaire Thai chairman Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha - have moved even further ahead of the Clarets: “It felt like a Championship game. There was not a great deal of fluidity to it. It was a scrappy game. They didn’t come here to play any fluid football. They came here to be difficult to beat and they were.

“I think we are better than we were last season. I don’t think they are as good as they were last year on today’s performance but what they do have is spirit.”

He also had time to criticise the time it took to get Kieran Trippier off the pitch, after the Burnley right back had been hurt by a poor challenge from Schlupp and forced off on a stretcher: “What irritates me more than anything is that a player goes down injured six inches from the edge of the pitch and it takes them six minutes to get him off the field.”