TENDAYI Darikwa is urging his team-mates to use Saturday’s derby defeat to Preston as the inspiration for another unbeaten run.

So far this Burnley have followed their previous two Championship defeats with impressive runs of form.

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After a 2-0 defeat at Ipswich the Clarets went on to win their next four league outings, while they bounced back from a Turf Moor reverse at Reading in late September by putting together a nine game unbeaten run which was brought to a halt by North End.

And now Darikwa wants to see a similar response, starting with Saturday’s testing trip to Loftus Road to take on Queens Park Rangers.

“We’d been on a good run but hopefully we can go on another one now starting with QPR which will be a tough game away.” said Darikwa, an ever-present for the Clarets this season.

“We have to write this one off because you can’t turn back time. It’s a defeat and we need to move on now.

“We need to dust ourselves down now and get ready for the weekend away at QPR.

“It’s obviously disappointing to lose the game; it’s disappointing to lose any football match particularly after the run that we’d been on and at home in front of our fans in a local derby.”

Darikwa backed his manager’s assessment that the Clarets opening salvo against Preston was their best of the season so far.

But the former Chesterfield full-back said a failure to take their chances had cost Burnley.

“I think for the first 15 or 20 minutes it’s one of the best we’ve played all season but unfortunately we couldn’t take our chances to punish Preston,” the 25-year-old said.

“They took their chances in the end.

“Both keepers were kicking the ball and as soon as it was in the air it was going over us. The conditions weren’t great but it was the same for them as what it was for us.”

For the second weekend in a row Burnley found themselves two goals down, and their powers of recovery at Turf Moor failed them after the previous weeks heroics at Cardiff City salvaged an unlikely point.

Darikwa, who is continuing to keep Matt Lowton out of the side, said the Clarets would be hitting the video room to asses their recent wobbles, but backed the character in the side to shine through.

“It’s disappointing not to score in any game,” he said. “I thought we had a few chances but at the same time if you’re not scoring you’ve got to try and keep a clean sheet. We didn’t do that which is disappointing but we have to move on from that.

“You can’t give teams leg ups, particularly in this league, so it’s disappointing that we’ve gone two goals down in our last two games. We’ll analyse the video and move on from there.

“I think last week proved that we’ve got character in our side. We keep going right until the end in every game we play and last weekend proved that.”