BRIAN Laws has urged Burnley fans not to give up on the Clarets, even though yesterday’s derby defeat pushed them closer to the drop.

A highly contentious first-half penalty, converted by David Dunn, consigned last season’s play-off winners to a second consecutive home defeat and left them second bottom, after Hull City’s win over Fulham the day before.

To add to their relegation woes, Burnley failed to score at home for the first time this season.

Laws feels they need to win at least half of their remaining six games – the first of which is at home to Manchester City on Saturday – to stand any chance of staying up.

With only nine points earned from a possible 63, and only one win in the last 21 games, the odds are stacked against the Clarets.

But Laws is refusing to wave the white flag.

“Everybody will write us off and say that we’re down, gone, that’s it, finished,” he said.

“Maybe even our own supporters will feel like that. But the facts are that it’s still mathematically possible. "So while it’s still in our hands that’s what we’ll do. "We’ll keep believing that we can do it, and we need the supporters to support the players to maybe even achieve it.

“We’re going to have to get three, maybe four, wins. "No matter whether we get it at the beginning of the six-game run or at the end. It might even be that we get it at the end. "The one thing is, we won’t give up.”

But Laws accepted that the tension is starting to show on his troops.

“I thought we were a little bit nervous in the first half, maybe Blackburn were a little bit more confident in terms of their game play than we were, because they’ve obviously secured themselves in the Premier League and the pressure was quite firmly at our feet,” he said.

“But I thought once we got the ball down we started to create and we had a couple of good opportunities to get back into the game.”

However, the Clarets boss admitted the players had taken a while to recover from conceding in controversial circumstances.

Referee Mike Dean awarded a penalty when Martin Olsson went down inside the box, in between advancing goalkeeper Brian Jensen and back-tracking right back Tyrone Mears.

Neither made contact with the Swede, and neither was booked.

“If he thought contact was being made, centre of goal, the last man was the goalkeeper, then you either book the goalkeeper or you send him off,” said Laws.

“So he must have had some hesitancy within his game to not even book him.

“Quite clearly we’re disappointed with that, and it was obviously a turning point within the game. There was nothing in it until that moment.

“One thing we have to do continuously is pick ourselves up, and that was a massive blow to us.

“The first goal’s always going to be the key in a game of this magnitude. "A scrappy affair and neither team wants to give anything up.

“You want to get that first goal, and giving it to Blackburn - particularly with a penalty that wasn’t - it did knock the stuffing out of us a wee bit, I’ve got to be honest, and it showed in our next 10 minutes of play.

“But credit to the players, they brushed it off and we got going again in the second half. "We got the ball down and started to ask some questions of Blackburn.

“For all the possession we had we didn’t really create what I would call clear opportunities. "There were half chances, and in a game like this they’re going to come in that kind of way. "You’re going to get a half chance and you’ve got to bury them.

“That’s the difference between the sides. They’ve taken their opportunity, they’ve got a penalty and they’ve secured the win. "They’ve dug in very deeply and defended in numbers. It was always going to be difficult to break them down.”