Scott Parker sounded a defiant message as he vowed his Burnley side would keep fighting after a fifth consecutive Premier League defeat left them second bottom of the table.
Daniel Munoz headed in the only goal just before half-time as Crystal Palace edged a poor game 1-0, with Burnley seeing Jacob Bruun Larsen hit the crossbar and a handful of late chances go begging as they failed to score for a fourth out of seven home league games this term.
Turf Moor felt edgy and nervous as Burnley fell short once again but Parker insisted he was not worried about the current run of form as he was happy with what his side had shown him.
“I’m not concerned,” he said. “All I’m concerned about is maintaining, keep learning, keep pushing. We’re fighters. I’m a fighter and this group are fighters. This football club – this is what we are.
“This team at times represents what we are as a football club really. We knew the challenge ahead of us. These players probably didn’t know it and that’s my job to explain to them but this is part of the journey and part of what you need to be.
“I’ve got a group here that fight. That may not be enough but my God when the curtain comes down at the end of this season we’ll all be judged. Between now and then we’ll fight and do everything in our power to try and be successful and I thought the team represented that tonight.”
The statistics backed up Parker’s argument given Burnley had 11 attempts at goal to Palace’s three, but only three of them – Bruun Larsen’s strike, a curling Jaidon Anthony effort in the first half, and a header from Armando Broja hacked cleared after a Dean Henderson mistake – looked really threatening.
“For large parts of this game in terms of how we went about it we did everything necessary,” Parker added. “The fine margins have decided the game in terms of them executing while the fine margins didn’t fall our way.
“In a young squad I can see the load at times and the weight that hangs on the shoulders. This group of players are maybe experiencing a thing for the first time and that thing is adversity, not having success. I asked them to be brave and courageous tonight and they were every bit of that.”
Palace’s win moved them up to fifth and turned the page on back-to-back defeats against Strasbourg and Manchester United – both games in which they had led at half-time only to lose 2-1.
“What makes me really proud today was their resilience, their togetherness and the fight for each other,” Oliver Glasner said. “I’m really pleased to get this win here at Burnley…
“It’s very tough for the players because this is a third game in six days. The last two games we had the lead at half-time and lost 2-1 so that is somewhere in the back of the minds of the players, you are expecting that Burnley will come again.
“They are near the bottom of the table and they want to come back… It’s about staying resilient and that’s why I’m really pleased with what I’ve seen today.”
