Junior Stanislas tipping Clarets to forget early misery with win run (From Lancashire Telegraph)

Junior Stanislas tipping Clarets to forget early misery with win run

10:44am Wednesday 19th September 2012 in Sport By Suzanne Geldard, Burnley FC reporter

JUNIOR Stanislas expects Burnley to put their early season blip behind them and keep climbing the Championship table.

The Clarets recovered from three straight league defeats and moved out of the bottom three thanks to Saturday’s 5-2 win over Peterborough United.

And Stanislas, who completed the scoring with his second of the season, believes the only way is up for Burnley now.

Eddie Howe’s men face an identical run to the start of their season, with back-to-back away games – beginning with Leicester City tonight (kick-off 7.45pm) – coming after a home fixture.

But after following up the opening day win over Bolton at Turf Moor with consecutive defeats at Middlesbrough and Huddersfield, Stanislas is hoping for more success on their travels this time.

“We’re still quite a young squad and still learning,” said the winger, “But after suffering those defeats we felt how good it was to get a win on Saturday and hopefully we can take that into the next couple of games and throughout the season to put us in good stead.

“It’s nice to get a win after three straight defeats. We’ve done that and it gives everyone around the place a boost.

“Leicester are a big club but I think we’ve played quite a lot of good teams with the start we’ve had – Bolton, Middlesbrough, now we’ve got Leicester as well so that’s three big clubs.

“We’re just looking to take points from anyone.

“Playing against the so-called big teams tends to bring out the best in us anyway. We don’t fear anyone. We look forward to games like this and playing the big teams.”

Burnley were one short of equalling a club record of 11 league away wins last season.

The challenge this season is to at least maintain that standard, and improve on a disappointing return of just seven home wins, with manager Howe hoping that will contribute to achieving the consistency that they are striving for.

”We’re looking for a run of games where we’re hard to beat, difficult to play against,” he said.

“I think that’s the challenge of every team in the Championship seeking it and already you can see the league is probably going to be similar to last year where you’ve got a whole group of teams with a couple of points between them which goes to show the unpredictability of the league and the strength of the league really.

“Every game you go into you know it’s a tough game, and that’s no different with the next two coming up (Leicester and Derby away), and the games beyond.”

Howe was pleased with the character shown in recovering from a shock 2-1 deficit to put five past Peterborough on Saturday.

But will he was encouraged by his side’s attacking threat, he warned there is room for improvement at the back.

“Defensively there are a couple of things we need to work on - we’ve conceded 10 league goals this year,” he said.

“I still don’t think there is anything majorly wrong with us defensively but we’ve conceded a lot of goals from set plays, obviously we’ve conceded a penalty and from our perspective a disappointing second goal on Saturday. There our things we can work on and rectify.”

Burnley have struggled to deal with set pieces this season, which proved costly in defeats to Huddersfield and Brighton, but Howe believes that is something they can overcome quickly.

“It wasn’t a problem for us last year, I thought we were excellent in that respect,” he said.

“It’s something we do work on, players are given responsibilities and jobs and they have to see them out.

“Sometimes it’s a one versus one dual and you have to come out on top and perhaps we haven’t been doing that well enough.”