PROUD Burnley boss Owen Coyle praised his players for overcoming what he had labelled their toughest test, in preparation for their next big assignment.

The Clarets boss sensed a weight of expectation on his side before the visit of struggling Norwich, after holding promotion favourites Birmingham to a draw and beating Reading in the space of 10 days.

But Chris Eagles’ brace earned a comfortable win over the Canaries to set them up for a run of three consecutive away games, beginning at leaders Wolves and ending at QPR, with the small matter of a Carling Cup fourth round clash at Chelsea sandwiched in between.

And Coyle insists his players can go into each contest full of confidence.

“We have quality within our squad and that’s been shown,” he said.

“I still believe that Reading, Birmingham and Wolves will be the big hitters to catch, but we’ve shown that we can stand toe-to-toe with (Reading and Birmingham) and we go to Wolves next week.

“We’ve got a nice easy week with Wolves away, Chelsea away and QPR away!

“Those will be real tests and it’s a great week for those players to be looking forward to.”

He added: “I said during the week it was going to be our most difficult game of the season, given the perfor-mances against Birmingham and Reading.

“I think those games take care of themselves, but there was probably an expectation to win (on Saturday) and I’m delighted the lads have stuck to what we’re trying to teach.

“Aside from it being 2-0, I thought it was a really bright performance.”

Coyle, who restored Robbie Blake to the starting line-up for the striker’s 500th career league appearance, was particularly pleased with the positive manner in which his players responded to a host of missed chances in the first half.

“I thought the game was similar to last week at Charlton and should have been out of reach by half-time,” he said.

“The level of play was fantastic and the openings we created were real gilt-edged chances. And within that I thought some of the play and movement, just working off each other and in relation to each other, was very exciting to watch.

“We really should have been well in front by half-time, but we weren’t, so we asked them to just keep believing in what they were doing and stay true to the principles of what we’re trying to teach, and we did that to score two magnificent goals.

“You always had that thought in the back of your mind ‘is it going to be one of these days?’ “But they kept believing in what they were doing and I think the quality of the goals was there for everybody to see.”

Following back-to-back clean sheets, the Burnley boss added: “We know we can score goals, I think it’s so important though that we know we can keep it nice and tight at the back it gives us a platform to go and win your games if it’s 1-0 or 2-0 as opposed to 3-1 and 3-2 that we've been known for.

“The one thing we won’t compromise is that we want to go and attack and we want to go and play exciting football that everyone enjoys.

“I’m pleased for Brian (Jensen) because coming off the back of his performance the other night it was great that he got another clean sheet.

"I think he’ll take a lot of pleasure and enjoyment from that, and that’s important.”

And after fit-again Clarke Carlisle returned to the starting line-up, Coyle admitted Michael Duff was an unfortunate absentee.

“It wasn’t easy leaving Michael Duff out,” he said.

“There were certainly more than 11 that deserved to be starting and I explained to Michael before the game that there wasn’t really anything to justify him not playing, apart from a bit of bad luck.

“He was not well during the week with a bug and hadn’t trained until (Friday).

“He’d looked fine and it wouldn’t have been a problem for him to play but we changed it the other night and brought Chris Eagles in and put Graham Alexander at right back and fortunately it's worked for us.”