CHRIS McCann would have been a young boy growing up in Dublin when Mr Motivator hit UK television screens in the early 1990s.

It’s a role the captain is about to take on himself with Burnley – not in the flourescent lycra-clad fitness guru sense, but getting into his team-mates’ psyche to raise them from another post-international break slump.

Midfielder McCann felt the team fell flat at Oakwell and struggled to recover from Jacob Butterfield’s first-half opener. Ricardo Vaz Te’s goal consigned the Clarets to a second consecutive defeat and a second game without a goal in return.

“Conceding early isn’t helping us, it feels like we have to score two or three goals to win a game.

“We’re giving ourselves a mountain to climb, and we’ll have to rectify that in training, and be more resilient,” said the 24-year-old. “It’s about self-motivation and if we can get that going, we will get our rewards.

“We are a close team, but you can’t pinpoint what’s going on at the moment.

“You’re always motivated going to play a game, but we were a little bit flat on Tuesday. We had a little chat among the boys and agreed we need to buck up our ideas a bit - it’s no good just turning up to games and flicking a switch and out you go and play.

“We were all disappointed, but we can put it right at Coventry. It’s a big game now, but we’re all confident in our ability, it’s just a matter of tweaking one or two things.

“We know we’re good players and what we’re capable of, it’s just trying to find that and get into that mode, preparing better. We just have to start believing a bit more and motivate ourselves a bit more.”

McCann is determined turn a corner tomorrow, after revealing defeats are hitting him harder than ever in his role as skipper.

“It hurts a lot more,” he said. “It wasn’t easy to take on Tuesday, and all day Wednesday I was feeling down – you don’t know what to do, where to go, everything seems to be coming down on top of you like a tonne of bricks.

“It’s part and parcel of the job, but I’m strong enough to try to put that right.

“We have to look forward and not make the same mistakes.”