Howe: 'The worst few days of my life'

The Burnley manager has spent time on compassionate leave following the sudden death of his mother, Annie.

Howe missed last weekend's home game with Crystal Palace to be with his family.

But the 34-year-old returned to the Clarets’ Gawthorpe training base yesterday to prepare for tomorrow’s trip to Cardiff City, and insisted his mother wouldn’t have wanted him to be anywhere else.

“I know my mum would want me to be here, want me to be working and winning football matches,” he said.

“She was an adopted Burnley fan because she just supported me - wherever I went - and wanted us to win, so she’d want me here and she’d want me at the game.

“Saturday was a very difficult day because that was the day she passed away and it was tough.

“Obviously my immediate thoughts were with my family. It’s not just myself to worry about, I’ve got brothers and sisters and other family members, so it was very difficult.

“It’s been the worst few days of my life, there’s no doubt about that.

“But back to work and back to football, that’s the healthiest thing for me and my family.

“She’d want us to win. That would be all she’d care about.

“I couldn’t have had a bigger supporter in my camp and that meant so much to me on a personal level.

“She was so supportive of me all through my life so she would want me to try to be as successful as I can.

“I know she’d be saying ‘get back to work will you!’ – I know she would – and that’s what I’ve got to do.

“I just want to do even more for her and be as successful as I can be.”

And Howe hopes success will come tomorrow in South Wales, where Burnley will be battling for their first win in five games.

“It’s been a disappointing run. Within that we’ve had games that we should have comfortably won. I felt the Watford game and watching the Palace game back we should have won that,” he said.

“It’s been a disappointing sequence of games in terms of results.

“I still don’t think we’re miles away from where we need to be, but we need to defend better and we need to score more goals.

“I think that’s a collective effort. We need to see more goals coming from all areas of the pitch.”

Burnley may be without 21-goal top scorer Jay Rodriguez after a groin problem meant he failed to re-appear for the second half of the 1-1 home draw with Palace, after giving the Clarets the lead with an early penalty.

The striker is set to be assessed this morning before a decision is taken on whether he will play or not.

“We’ll have a look at him,” said Howe.

“With Jay he’s done well to play all the games that he has this season. He’s just had a slight niggle in his hamstring and in his groin. It’s been there for a couple of weeks and it flared up against Palace and he felt he couldn’t do himself justice.

“He actually performed really well in the half so it was a real blow to lose him and he is the one that’s doing it for us at the minute. He’s the one scoring the goals, so we desperately want him fit, but we don’t want to damage his long-term health so we’ll see how he is.”

Tomorrow will be Burnley’s second trip to the Cardiff City Stadium this season, having lost to the eventual Carling Cup runners up in the fourth round.

“It’s never easy going to Cardiff. I’ve seen them a lot this season and I think they’re a good side,” said Howe.

“Malky’s done a fantastic job and they were fantastic against Liverpool in the final.”