CHRIS McCann admits Burnley have been ‘heartbroken’ by a run of four straight defeats, but believes they are good enough to climb away from the danger zone.

The Clarets, who failed to add to their squad before last night’s loan deadline, go into tomorrow’s game at Hull City languishing in 21st place after picking up only six points from a possible 24.

Basic defensive errors have cost them late goals in their last two games.

But captain McCann feels there were enough positives to draw on in both performances, against Leeds and Birmingham, to boost their bid to stop the rot.

“We have too much quality to think about this situation - we’re a lot better than it suggests,” said the midfielder.

“The league position isn’t where we should be for how we’ve played. We’re all ambitious and want to achieve great things in our careers, and want to be fighting at the other end.

“It’s difficult to take at the minute, we’ve been playing well - we’ve not been playing badly and getting tonked.

“We’ve put in good performances and come away with nothing, and it’s devastating.

“I don’t think our league position reflects how we’ve been playing, we’ve been unfortunate in some games.

“We’ve been working our socks off with no reward, thinking ‘where’s it gone wrong?’ “We never really came out of the traps at Birmingham, but I felt we got better as the game went on and it would have been a great result to have drawn 1-1.

“To lose a goal in the manner we did in the last minute was heartbreaking. We had a good performance against Leeds - probably one of our best. I thought we were fantastic. We moved the ball well in spells against Birmingham, but it’s all about results.

“It’s a game of inches.

“You can’t afford to switch off in this league or you get punished.”

But while being so close to the bottom three is a concern, McCann insists they are refusing to panic.

“To be here is heartbreaking, everyone’s feeling it, and the sooner we get three points, the better.

“It’s gutting to be this far down the league, although it’s early days - we’re not halfway through,” he said.

“It’s too early to be panicking, once we get a couple of wins we’ll be fine and not looking over our shoulder.

“If we keep pushing we’ll get the wins to take us up the table.

“We’ve all been trying to pull together from the word go, but it’s small margins, we just need to be cleverer and see games out, show a bit more experience - we can be naive.

“We should be seeing games out, like against Leeds, or shut up shop and take the point at Birmingham.

“We just have to keep working hard for each other.”

Although Burnley are closer to the bottom three than the coveted top six, McCann is mindful that only eight points separates them from seventh place.

“Hopefully we can start kicking on because we don’t want to be looking back, seeing who’s behind us, with the quality we have we’re capable of being much higher up. It’s so tight,” said the 24-year-old.

“You have to take all the positives and we’ve had some really good performances. If you look back, we’ve been in every game and had numerous chances to win games.

“We just need more hard work, and everyone pulling in the right direction. There were some good performances at Birmingham, but we need more.

“There were positives, but we’d take a bad performance and the three points at the moment.

“Hopefully we can get that win at Hull.”