CHRIS McCann insists Burnley should have made the Championship play-offs this season, but is confident that a young squad will learn from the disappointment.

The Clarets skipper was left frustrated after Saturday’s 1-1 draw at home to Coventry effectively ended the club’s chances of making the top six, with boss Eddie Howe conceding that their promotion hopes are now over.

McCann was part of the Burnley squad that reached the Premier League in 2009 and pointed to away victories at the likes of West Ham and Middlesbrough as evidence that the current team were capable of making the top six.

“You’ve got to look at when we did play the bigger teams like West Ham and Middlesbrough, even Brighton last week, who are all there or thereabouts,” said the Irishman.

“It’s very difficult to go home when we’ve played very well against these teams and beaten these teams, to think they’re sitting pretty in the top six and we’re just mid-table.

“It’s a hard one to take and we know we should be there, but for a couple of sloppy performances.

“That’s where we’ve slipped up this season. In the big games we’ve been performing really well but, no disrespect, against the lesser teams who we should be beating we’ve not beaten them.

“Inconsistent is the way you’d describe us. We’ve had some really good wins and then we just seem to take the foot off the gas for some reason and have a poor performance.

“We’re disappointed because we were still in with a shout of grabbing the sixth spot, albeit I said it was going to be difficult, we needed to win all of our games.”

Burnley currently sit 11th in the table but McCann thinks the squad will be wiser for the experience next term as they again bid to challenge for promotion, citing the defeat at Watford – when they lost 3-2 after leading 2-0 – as a particular example.

“I think this season was a massive learning curve for all of us,” he said. “We’re a young team with a lot of new faces. It was always going to be difficult to overhaul the team that we had for the last couple of years and bring in all new faces and expect us to click just overnight.

“There have been good signs there all season, we’re capable of doing great things, it’s just a matter of being consistent “We’re a good, ambitious young squad and we don’t want to be languishing in mid-table in the Championship.

“We want to be fighting for things and we want to be promoted, and we’re going to take that into next season.

“The tough games like Watford away, that will put us in good stead because we don’t want those things happening to us again.

“We’ll learn from all of those performances and hopefully put it right.”