STEPHEN Ward is confident Burnley can end their away day hoodoo if they can match the 'attitude, mentality and performance' that they produced at Anfield a week ago.

Burnley were narrowly beaten at Liverpool but the Clarets had more shots than the hosts on Merseyside and led for most of the first half before Georginio Wijnaldum's fortunate equaliser on the stroke of half-time.

That extended Burnley's winless away run to 14 Premier League games this season but they have a chance to put an end to that record at the Stadium of Light against the Black Cats, who are propping up the table.

"We have to go there and perform how we have been," said Republic of Ireland full-back Ward.

"They’re going to be well up for the game and they’ve probably earmarked this as one they need to win to give themselves a good chance.

"We need to go with that mentality as well. It will be tough going up there and I’m sure they will have a big following on the day.

"We performed very well up there in the FA Cup game, I feel if we can go with the same attitude, mentality and performance level that we had at Anfield we give ourselves a really good chance of picking something up from the game."

Burnley have a seven-point cushion on the bottom three with 10 games to go but Ward knows the Clarets are entering a crucial stage of the season and having not won since the end of January they are desperate to get back to winning ways.

"We’ve got 10 big games now, we’ll take each one as it comes, one at a time, but you want to get that next win as soon as possible," he said.

"We’ve lost a couple on the bounce now and had a couple of draws so we need to get back to winning ways as soon as possible and hopefully we can do that on Saturday."