WHILE Robbie Blake is experiencing a massive lifestyle change, he's hoping it can coincide with a change of events for Burnley.

The Clarets striker recently became a father for the first time and describes the arrival of daughter Mia as the proudest moment of his life.

He is adapting to having his sleep disturbed on a nightly basis, except, curiously, the night before a game.

She may be only a few weeks old, but Mia is already proving to be a highly considerate little girl.

"I've had a few sleepless nights, apart from Friday night's when she seems to sleep. She gets the look off her dad!" he smiled.

"Fatherhood's very enjoyable. It's tiring, but you wouldn't change it."

One aspect Blake is eager to change though, on the field, is to stop conceding, and he believes the role of defending should be carried out as a team, starting at the front.

"It's funny, we can be keeping clean sheets and not scoring, or scoring and conceding, but the whole team have got to do better, defending as a team. If we do that, we've got players capable of scoring - if we keep it tight, we can win games, definitely," the 31-year-old said.

"You have to defend from the front. If we do that, and in midfield as well, and help the back four and the goalkeeper, we'll be all right.

"We kept 19 clean sheets in my last season here and won a lot of games 1-0, and if we could do that, we'd be happy, but we're scoring goals and conceding."

With the calibre of strikers in Burnley's armoury, staying on the goal trail is something Blake is confident the Clarets can do. All four are already off the mark, with four other team-mates contributing to a tally of 15 goals in nine league games, while the only game in which Burnley have failed to score was the 2-0 defeat at Scunthorpe in August.

"There's plenty of goalmouth action with the four of us, and you're just pleased to be out there for the full 90 minutes, as long as you're out there," continued Blake, who operated in a wide left role of a 4-5-1 formation at Cardiff in Burnley's last outing ahead of the fornight's break for internationals.

"You have to adapt to certain formations and situations.

"It doesn't matter who scores the goals, Ade's come on and scored late goals and they have been invaluable.

"If you look through the teams that are up there competition for places is very high. We need that to keep people on their toes and I'm sure we will have that for the rest of the season."

As we spoke during the second week of the international break, Blake noted that the absences of Northern Ireland duo Kyle Lafferty and Steve Jones, Iceland's Joey Gudjonsson and Scotland's Graham Alexander had left the club a quieter workplace.

But he expected Lafferty, in particular, to return to base larger than life after his second competitive goal for Northern Ireland earned a valuable draw against Sweden and kept them in the hunt for the Euro 2008 qualifiers.

"Kyler seems to get better with every training session, and it bodes well for him," Blake said.

"He's in the team at the moment as well, so that can only give him confidence.

"He's got everything, and if he keeps himself right and does the right things, he's got a good career ahead of him."

But Lafferty and co will re-focus on the domestic task in hand at Barnsley tomorrow.

History is against their quest for a return to winning ways, as the Clarets' last took three points from Oakwell in April 1932.

The 11 trips that have followed since then have resulted in four draws and seven defeats.

But although the Clarets' only league defeats of the season have occured on the road, Blake is hoping to tap into the away form that served them so well at Colchester, Sheffield Wednesday, and more recently the resolve displayed in earning a late point at Bristol City.

"We've done well away from home - in the Scunthorpe game we could have been two or three up after half-an-hour but we got a bit sloppy and lost a couple of goals, and we should have got something out of the Cardiff game," he said.

"Going 1-1 I thought there was only going to be one team that was going to win it. But we conceded pretty soon after and that sort of knocked the stuffing out of us a bit.

"If we beat Barnsley we go level on points and could overtake them on goal difference.

"The league's pretty tight at the moment. I'm sure it will take shape over Christmas and we need to be in the shake-up over Christmas to have a chance.

"I think we always knew that Watford would be strong and Charlton as well. Watford have got a four-point league and Charlton are only six points clear of us and we've got a game in hand.

"If we win that game in hand, and it's a home game as well, that puts us back in the top six.

"As long as we can keep in touch with them they are going to slip up and we need to be there to make sure we can keep with them.

"For me, there's not a stand-out team in the division and we've got to make sure, with the bigger teams, we take the points, and the lesser teams - no disrespect to them - we've got to make sure we win those games."

He added: "Barnsley's a tough place to go to - but everywhere in this division is tough at the moment.

"They've started very well and are sixth in the table. If we go there with confidence and the belief we have in each other then there's no reason why we can't get three points.

"Stephen Foster's done very well. The time I knew Foz it was only a couple of months but he is a really nice lad and I wish him all the best.

"Obviously I hope he has a stinker tomorrow and hopefully we can pinch the three points.

"You've got to give a lot of credit to their manager, he has done very well. But let's hope there are miscommunications tomorrow and we can capitalise on them."