I am deeply hurt by that

Last updated : 02 January 2008 By Tony Scholes
It has been a good holiday period for Blackpool with ten points out of twelve and this win, which took them to within a point of the Clarets, and it left home manager Simon Grayson praising both his players and fans after they had simply outplayed the Clarets.

The three players he substituted all received standing ovations from the vociferous home crowd and Grayson said: "I think it just typified the performance. I think you could have taken any of them off and they would have all got a real good applause from everybody.

"The fans know, not just on the back of the result, what sort of shift the players put in weekly. As long as you keep doing that the fans will come and watch you every week, and coupled with the performance and goals it is the icing on the cake really.

"All I can do is get my players organised and up for the occasion and I just thought our performance was like a lot of performances throughout the season. We've been very good, hard working, and we are probably getting the breaks now and scoring the goals that we weren't doing in the earlier part of the season.

"All we can do is get the results we have got, get the performances we have got and now we can't take our foot off the gas. We can't be complacent, we've still got a lot of points on the board to try and get to make sure that we are safe and the players are fully aware of that."

Owen Coyle was left rueing Burnley's worst performance in a long time and certainly had some sympathy for the fans who made the trip to Bloomfield Road, including the many who streamed out after the third goal.

"As the manager I feel I should apologise to the fans because I expect a lot better than that," he said after the game. "We can prepare the players and pre-warn them, but when they cross that white line they have to deliver and today they have not done that.

"If someone had told you that was going to happen, I wouldn't have believed you and disappointing doesn't sum it up. There are ways of getting beat and that is certainly not one of them. I am deeply hurt by that and I feel that I should be."

Pointing to the player he added: "There were one or two I thought giving everything they had, but it not one or two that you need. It was beyond belief and I have never seen a performance like that come from that set of players.

"I thought Blackpool started better than us and we never coped with their strikers. Having said that, when you analyse the goals they are very cheap and overall it is nowhere near the standard that we are looking for, or have shown before. There were far too many people nowhere near their individual standard and collectively nowhere near the standards I expect."

With the transfer window now open, Coyle admitted that he would be looking to strengthen his squad during the next month. "A lot of the players have been asked to play a lot of games because we haven't got a big enough squad," he admitted.

"So if it means freshening it up by bringing two or three in, then so be it. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to work out that we are badly needing a dominant centre half. We haven't won a header all day in either box.

But it is one thing identifying what you need and another getting them in and we've been trying to do that. So we'll pursue it in the next few days and see what happens. I have said to the lads before that you will get the opportunity and I like to think we are loyal when players are doing well. But equally when they are not doing their job, then we'll bring in somebody else who can."