BURNLEY manager Brian Laws bemoaned a lack of luck, after the Clarets failed to end their derby drought.

Aside from the debatable first-half penalty, which won the game for Blackburn Rovers in the end, there were a number of other decisions which Laws felt his side were on the wrong end of.

Wade Elliott had strong appeals for a spot kick turned down soon after David Dunn had scored, when he attempted to cut inside only to be blocked off by Chris Samba right on the edge of the box.

Referee Mike Dean deemed the foul to have been commited just outside and awarded a free kick.

Then, in the second half, Rovers goalkeeper Jason Brown appeared to handle the ball outside of the box, but no action was taken.

As the Clarets searched for an equaliser, Samba turned Danny Fox’s left wing cross behind, but Dean signalled for a goalkick instead of a corner.

“The penalty – was it or wasn’t it? – against Wade Elliott ... it looked very tight, I’ve got to be honest, from where we were standing,” he said.

“We had another opportunity to look at it on television and it was probably just on the line.

“Are we grasping at straws a wee bit? But that’s just the way things have been for us of late, we’ve not had any luck on our side.”

Of the Brown incident, he added: “You hope it evens itself out within a game. I didn’t feel we had the rub of the green from the referee at all.

“The goalkeeper’s gone out of his box, you can see quite clearly he’s handled it inside the box, and handled it outside the box. Yet they just played on.

“It does wind the players up because it frustrates them and they end up arguing over it for a few minutes rather than getting on with the game.

“It’s just very disappointing that we didn’t get any fairness within the game.

“We just had no luck on our side.

“But our own mistake was the catalyst again – a throughball has got them into a penalty position when really they shouldn’t really have had that opportunity in the first place, so it’s always giving ourselves a mountain to climb.”