GOAL THREAT

It’s becoming a familiar lament this season and is perhaps the only negative on the horizon for the Clarets. Just where are the goals going to come from?

With that defensive record it often only takes one but it rarely looked like coming on Saturday, with Ashley Barnes’ late chance the only really good one Burnley created.

The Clarets have scored four times in this seven-game winless run in all competitions, but they’ve come against Manchester United (two), Liverpool and Manchester City.

Against that there have now been blanks against Brighton, Huddersfield and Crystal Palace and the finishing touch in those tight games just isn’t arriving at the moment.

The return of Chris Wood can only help in that regard, but Burnley should be looking for more from midfield as well and Jeff Hendrick has begun to struggle in the more advanced role of the central trio.

There is an occasional goal threat there from Hendrick but at the moment we’re not really seeing it and he’s completed just full games in his last eight league outings, having lasted the course five times in his first 12 games, with a further two of those seeing late substitutions. At the moment Hendrick’s influence is on the wane.

CHARLIE TAYLOR

This was an encouraging afternoon for Charlie Taylor’s development, in the sense that he endured a difficult start before recovering well.

It was a surprise to see Wilfried Zaha as his direct opponent for much of the game and he struggled early on. Palace’s quick, direct approach was isolating the full-backs against Zaha and Bakary Sako and Taylor’s troubles were highlighted by a weak header back to Nick Pope which nearly led to a second goal.

But he was much better in the second half, giving Zaha far less freedom to run at him and restricting Palace’s raids down that flank.

His recovery included an excellent block from a Zaha volley after the break and his booking for nudging Zaha off the pitch and into a TV camera late on was harsh. The impact of Zaha and the camera made the incident look worse, but it wasn’t Taylor who had put the camera there.

Taylor is still only seven games into his Premier League career and this was an experience he can take plenty from.

DEFENSIVELY RATTLED

Taylor was far from the only Claret to be rattled at the back in the first half.

In the week before this games James Tarkowski had talked about his first Premier League start in this fixture last season and how he had come through a ‘sticky start’ and it was a similar story on Saturday.

Tarkowski again recovered his composure after a couple of early mistakes, but Phil Bardsley endured a tough 90 minutes, allowing Bakary Sako too much space to drive into the area for the first goal and then committing a couple of needless free-kicks in the second half.

Bardsley has impressed since earning his chance through Matt Lowton’s injury but this was the first time we’ve seen him dip below those high standards he’s set recently.

NKOUDOU’S DEBUT

One bright spark for the Clarets was Georges-Kevin Nkoudou’s half-hour cameo from the bench.

The French winger was never likely to start this game given his lack of action for Tottenham this season but he looked lively when he came on.

His first touch saw him win a free-kick from James McArthur with a neat turn and he showed pace and skill to trouble Palace.

The next task is for Nkoudou to influence games on a more consistent basis and earn regular starts, but he showed glimpses on Saturday that he could be a good offensive weapon for Sean Dyche in the final months of the season.

A TOUGH RUN

Burnley’s six-game winless streak in the league is now comfortably the Clarets longest this season and they only had one comparable run last season when seven matches without a win was ended with success at home to Stoke.

With Manchester United next up at Turf Moor this run could yet extend to seven, but there’s no cause for alarm.

It says something about the ferocious pace Dyche’s side have set this season that they can go six without a win at this stage and still be three points clear of eighth.

To use a Dyche-ism there have also been ‘fine margins’ in some of those games. The Clarets were a matter of minutes away from all three points at Old Trafford and should have won at Huddersfield on the quality of chances and a penalty call that was turned down.

This season was never going to pass without this kind of run and it’s now a test for Burnley to see how they respond, with the pressure in terms of a fight against the drop well and truly off.