ROBBIE Blake has backed Burnley to maintain their top six Championship challenge, despite losing to leaders Wolves.

The Clarets striker put Saturday’s disappointing 2-0 defeat largely down to an uncharacteristically poor first-half display at Molineux, with defender Clarke Carlisle’s late red card adding to their woes.

But Blake insists there is enough quality within the team to stage an immediate recovery when their league campaign resumes at QPR on Saturday, and warned Wolves to expect a very different game when the teams meet for the return fixture in February.

“They're up there on merit, but you certainly wouldn’t be worried about taking them on again - at Molineux or at Turf Moor,” said Blake.

“As the manager said, there’s no-one in this division to fear. We’ve played all the top teams now and we’re lying in fifth on merit, and five points off an automatic promotion spot.

“Nothing’s changed. We’ve lost, but we haven’t lost ground on second place.

“We've lost ground on first place but there are a lot of points still to be played for and with this group of players we’ve certainly got a chance of being in the mix at the end of the season.

“I think it’s just one of those games. We knew as a group of players coming to the side top of the table it was going to be a difficult game, but we had belief in our changing room that if we applied ourselves properly we’d give a good account of ourselves. We didn’t do that in the first half and ultimately we’ve paid the price.

“We didn’t start very well and allowed them to play. We normally play at a high tempo, which we didn’t in the first half. It took us a good 15 minutes to realise that we needed to up our game, and it was a bit too late with the second goal going in.”

And Blake has urged Burnley to respond to Saturday’s defeat in the same way as they did after losing to Reading.

The Clarets engineered a five-game unbeaten run after going down 3-1 at the Madejski Stadium last month - their only loss in 15 league and cup games before the weekend.

“We got beat at Reading and went on another bit of a run and played really well, and with the team spirit and players we’ve got I’m sure we’ll do that again,” said Blake, who felt Burnley didn’t get the goal they deserved for their second-half improvement at Molineux.

“We didn’t play particularly well in the first half, the gaffer let us know and I think he got a response in the second half, but the second goal’s killed us.

“We genuinely thought we were going to get a goal; I thought we started the second half very well and put pressure on them.

“As a team top of the league they sort of sat back and thought ‘we’re in a game now’, so it was disappointing to lose the second goal because I think we could have nicked a point.”