We can't keep gifting goals

Burnley came out on the wrong side of a bizarre 5-3 defeat at Preston, despite one of their best performances of the season in a classic Lancashire derby.

And Ternent admitted the growing goals-against column needs addressing to give Burnley a platform for better things next year.

He said: "Burnley Football Club is a very important part of the fans' lives and that is the responsibility I have as the manager. I am absolutely naffed off - worse than naffed off I have to tell you - because we were by miles the better side.

"We have played fantastically well and I'm sure Craig Brown would acknowledge that Preston have been very fortunate, but you don't always get what you deserve in football and we can't go on conceding goals at the rate we are going.

"It ain't right, so I have to do something about it, or make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

"We played very well, passed the ball well and created lots of chances. Perhaps we would have been more clinical because I am always looking for more.

"But the goals we gave away are just nonsensical and it kills you. It kills the players as well and they end up thinking 'what's the point?'".

Ternent is always at pains to point out that his teams take defeat on the chin collectively, rather than individually. However, under duress he reluctantly conceded that keeper Brian Jensen had a day to forget in the Burnley goal.

Ternent explained: "We work as a team. We create chances as a team, we score goals as a team and we defend as a team. But when one player has an off day like the keeper has today....

"To be fair to him he has played absolutely blinding for us in a lot of games, but it's no coincidence that when you have conceded 40 plus goals, you have to look somewhere - and that would be a defensive problem I would have thought.

"I don't single players out in press conferences because what happens in that dressing room stays in that dressing room. It's no good asking if they are individual errors because people have seen that."

Elaborating, he added: "The goalkeeper had a nightmare. There - that has come out of the dressing room and it's the last time I single any player out and I hope that makes people happy because now they can go home and write about him.

"Now I think that is totally wrong, but people have seen the game and he's to blame for four goals at least. Now I've told you and that's how I see it as a professional football manager."

The defeat saw Burnley slip to 18th place in Division One, with a tricky Boxing Day trip to Crewe and a home game against improving Stoke two days later completing the Christmas programme.

Without question, much of Burnley's football in an incident packed first half of the season would be more suited to the top six, rather than the bottom seven.

But Ternent is adamant he is still several players short of assembling a squad capable of mounting any such challenge.

He said: "A couple of weeks ago the newspapers were saying Burnley could be contenders for the play-offs and certainly we could be - if I had another three or four players.

"But there are no transfer fees at our level unless you are a Norwich or West Ham, or someone with a benefactor. I have that with my chairman, but he's done enough and we want to look around at other people who are with him to help as well because the knack isn't really in fees, it's about getting better players.

"To get that you have to look higher up and to look higher up, the wages are more. It's the same for everybody. You ask Craig Brown and he will tell you the same - he will want three or four players to maintain his push to stay in the play-offs or automatic promotion.

"You don't need to be Einstein to know that."