The reliable law of averages would argue that a performance like Saturday’s was always going to happen.

Following Burnley’s impressive recent run of form, there was always likely to be a blip. That’s just the nature of football: you can’t win ‘em all, and all that.

This was a game in which the Clarets laboured throughout and never truly got to grips with. There was a brief spell midway through the first half when Nathan Delfouenso’s header scraped the bar and Jay Rodriguez couldn’t quite get his shot away, but other than that, Saturday’s was a game of slim pickings and very few positives for.

In attacking terms, a lack of creativity and incision turned out to be Burnley’s Achilles’ heel.

But if the Clarets had problems in the attacking department, they were as nothing compared to their defensive frailties.

The two goals conceded from set-pieces were not just soft, but positively gooey. It is perhaps a trifle harsh to criticise a back-line which, prior to Saturday, had just kept back-to-back clean sheets. Yet the non-existent nature of the marking will not have pleased Eddie Howe.

Yet as dispiriting as the performance was, there is no need to listen to some of the doom merchants who were knocking around in the town’s pubs and clubs or moaning on phone-ins that night.

The main reason to be cheerful stems from the fact that Burnley firmly remain the masters of their own destiny as far as the play-off picture is concerned.

In fact should they take maximum points from their two games in hand they will move to within two points of second place.

And as the manager himself remarked after the game, “Sometimes you learn more from a defeat and we have learned a lot.”

And if those lessons have been learned and Burnley bring their A-game to Turf Moor this evening, there is no reason why we cannot claim three points against a managerless Coventry side.