BURNLEY boss Steve Cotterill is looking for inspiration from Manchester United to get the Clarets season back on track.

Supporters' expectations were high at Turf Moor at the start of the season after an impressive unbeaten run.

But the Burnley faithful have come crashing back down to earth in the last seven days following defeat at home to Wolves and then watching their side toppling out of the Carling Cup to League Two strugglers Hartlepool.

However, Cotterill had no worries with supporters expecting his side to win and pointed to Old Trafford as an example to follow.

He said: "Maybe expectations have been raised, but what's wrong with expectations?

"I've got no problem with any supporters having high expectations, in fact I would encourage it.

"If you want to be at the top of the tree, the chances are you want to be working at Manchester United, whether you're a player or a coach.

"They go out with massive expectations every game, so they have to reach their standards.

"Why not aspire to have the same mentality that Manchester United do?

"There's always expectations for them to win, so if we have the same expectations, maybe that's good."

And despite what Cotterill admitted were "a bad three or four days" he leapt to the defence of his team and said their greatest incentive to get back on the winning trail was the chance to overtake Crystal Palace with a victory at Selhurst Park on Saturday.

Peter Taylor's side are also smarting from a Carling Cup embarrassment, going down to Notts County after fielding a strong, yet somewhat second-string side with most of the top players rested.

Cotterill added: "Obviously they've had a decent start, like ourselves, and we know, if we go down there and put in a right performance and win the game, we can go above them.

"So there's an incentive in that for ourselves.

"It's only early, and if it was March, we might be a bit happier with it.

"But we can only deal with the short term, and our plan is to go down there and put on a better performance than in the last couple of games.

"They made nine changes the other night, and that's okay, we're not overly bothered about that, we've known for two years that my team can't change too much, and the players have known that.

"That's why sometimes you get the hiccups and that's what we had the other night.

"We'll get that because lads are not always on it.

"We might only be so many games into the season, but mentally, sometimes they can't always get themselves up for it."