GRAHAM Alexander is in serious need of some home comforts.

The 35-year-old has been employed by two clubs this season, but has only been on the winning side on home soil once.

And the sole occasion was Burnley's last - as two early goals for Andy Gray and Robbie Blake paved the way for three points off Norwich City back in October.

But although Alexander believes the Clarets are due some success at Turf Moor, he insists they must go out and fight for it.

"You can say it's only a matter of time, but you don't just sit around waiting for it, you've got to make it happen yourself," said the former Preston North End defender.

"The law of averages say you're going to win one sooner or later, but you can't look at it like that because you'll go throughout the season and you won't win another game. You can't think Well, I thought it was going to come around'. You've got to force the issue.

"It's been too long now, a few months and a lot of games and we've got to turn it around ourselves."

Alexander was one of the players Arsene Wenger blamed for tiring out his young Gunners - yet more high praise from the Arsenal boss who admitted he was surprised to be left impressed by a mid-table Burnley side after their FA Cup third round encounter at Turf Moor.

"It's great to read things like that because he probably came up here expecting an up-and-at-them' kind of game, a real physical contest and not much football being played," said the Scotland international.

"But we showed that we can pass the ball about, be confident on it and then we closed them down because we knew if we didn't they would run riot, and that's got to be the recipe for every game we play this season.

"We've got to close people down thinking that they are Arsenal and we've got to keep the ball when we've got it. We've definitely got the players to do that, we've just got to add it to our mentality that we can bring it out on a Saturday and Tuesday night."

And Alexander wants that philosophy to begin at home to Plymouth Argyle tomorrow.

"This is a bigger game than Arsenal, without a doubt. The Blackpool game the week before was a bigger game.," he added.

"Obviously the Arsenal game's great; it's hyped up, it's on the television, it's against players that all the fans want to see you play against, but at the end of the day Burnley's about getting promotion from this division to the Premier League and the league games are the ones that you have to win to get that, so this is bigger game than Arsenal. It takes a different mentality because it's going to be a different type of game, but it's definitely one that we can win.

"We've proved that already with the teams we've beaten this season. I wasn't here at the time, but we beat West Brom at the start of the season, and we've beat Watford, Charlton, Wolves, Leicester away from home. They're all big clubs and we thoroughly deserved to win those games, but we've found ourselves wanting a little bit against teams in the bottom half of the table and I think that comes down to a mentality thing. If we show them the same respect and deal with the expectation of winning the game because you can go to Watford and Charlton and you're not expected to win the games so there's a little bit of pressure. It's a different sort of pressure and successful teams deal with that pressure and we've got to do that.

"I'm sure it's there and hopefully we can win one game and go from strength to strength from there.

"The lads are strong enough to do it and the manager knows we need to be better at home results-wise, so hopefully we'll turn it around.

"Even though we played well against Arsenal, we were still disappointed that we didn't get something out of the game because it's about winning games and getting results and that's what we wanted to do against Arsenal. We didn't manage it, but it was good to come out with a little bit of praise from people outside of Burnley. But at the end of the day, I'd rather have the wins than the performances.

"It's encouraging that we can play that well but we need to win games."

He added: "I think it's a mentality of working hard. Whatever team comes here, it's going to be a tough game. They're not going to come over here and just give three points to Burnley - we've got to take them from them.

"When we've done that away from home, when we haven't been expected to, we haven't had the same mentality at home, in my opinion. If we added that to ourselves, I think we could do really well in this division because we've got as good players here as any club in this division."