Burnley have been facing an unprecedented player availability crisis since the restart as a number of their first-team players have either been on the treatment table or have been out of contract and are unavailable to play. Ashley Barnes, Chris Wood, Robbie Brady, Johan Berg Gudmundsson and Matt Lowton have all been out injured and while Jay Rodriguez missed the trip to Palace he could be fit for Sunday’s clash with Sheffield United at Turf Moor.
But James Tarkowski is not going to use that as an excuse for any dip in performances as the Clarets are chasing an unlikely European football position.
James Tarkowski said “We could make easy excuses but we’re not allowing that to happen. We want to go out there and win football matches, There’s no chance and the gaffer won’t let us do that. He’s made a point of not letting us do that and as a group we’re not happy to do that. We want to go out there and we want to win games. There are opportunities there for us. We’ve lost a couple of great lads and great players and it’s not nice to see faces leave but we’ve got to deal with the numbers we’ve got and hopefully a few lads will come back from injury. We’ve picked up six points and we can see many more games coming up where we can pick up points, So we’re looking up and hopefully chasing the teams above us, rather than looking down. We’ve been there once before and it’s something we want to do, There are a few games to go but there are points to pick up, so we are looking forward to the start of this run-in now.”
