BURNLEY manager Eddie Howe has told his players to take on Cardiff with confidence after the Clarets clinched back-to-back league wins for the first time in 17 months with a win over Watford.

Chris Eagles and Chris Iwelumo combined to score and set up a goal each in nine second-half minutes at Vicarage Road to finally put the hoodoo to bed and bump them up the table, after Danny Graham had cancelled out a bizarre own goal for the visitors in the first half.

Poor away form was a big factor in Burnley’s inability to string successive wins together, but that is another problem that’s been rectified since Howe took charge last month.

Following on from beating promotion chasing Norwich at Turf Moor, Saturday’s 3-1 success was the Clarets’ second in four on the road under new management.

They had previously managed one all season.

And Howe said it was the ideal way to begin a run of four consecutive away games, with an FA Cup fifth round tie at West Ham and derby at Deepdale coming after tomorrow’s first visit to the new Cardiff City Stadium.

“It’s a very good start to what is a tough run of games.

"Four away games in a row is quite rare at any level, so to start that with a win I thought was crucial.

"Now we go to Cardiff in good form and in good spirits,” he said.

“I’ve just been told the stat of when the last back-to-back wins were in the league and it just surprised me. With the quality of the players here it’s an amazing stat really.

“We’re delighted to get it out of the way because people tend to talk about it and make a big thing of it, but it’s gone now.”

Burnley took the lead through Dale Bennett’s bizarre own goal, but were quickly pegged back by Danny Graham’s 13th minute equaliser, before Eagles stole the show in the last half-hour.

“When you’re given a goal like that you want to make it count,” said Howe.

“You want to really use it and I thought we were a little bit loose and conceded pretty much straight away, which was disap-pointing.

“But it was a big response again by the players because Watford made it difficult. They’re a good side.

“I thought we lived on the edge for a while. We can defend better than that, but going forward we always looked like we were going to score and we created a number of chances.”

And the Burnley boss praised Eagles and Iwelumo for their contributions.

“He was a difficult man for Watford to mark,” he said of Eagles.