Sean Dyche has confessed that Burnley are beginning to fade due to the demands of Premier League football and a number of injury issues.
The Clarets, currently without eight first-team squad members, saw their winless start to 2018 continue on Saturday as they fell 1-0 at Swansea City.
Ki Sung-yeung scored the only goal of the game at the Liberty Stadium inside the final 10 minutes, and Dyche admits that fatigue has started to take its toll on his players during their 11-match wait for victory.
"I think it's just beginning to catch up with us. Not through all of this run, there's been some very good performances, but it's just caught up with us a bit," he is quoted as saying by Sky Sports News. "It's important in these next couple of weeks, then hopefully we'll get some bodies back.
"It wasn't a great game but I don't think either team was worried about that. It's about points on the board. Another week where there's not a lot in the game, we had a few chances without being clinical. They had a couple of maybes and then they get a little bit of a stuffy one; I think it takes two nicks on the way in.
"We could have cleared it before that, 10 or 15 seconds before from the corner. It's a tight call. I think they edged it on the performance. It wasn't a great performance from either side, but they edged it I think. That sometimes happens at this level. It's a very, very tough league. We're going through a tough spell, not just because of the teams we're playing of course but also because we've got a lot of injuries.
"The margins are very fine between a performance that can win and one that doesn't. They're a good advert for that. This is a side that nine games ago had nowhere near that endeavour, nowhere near that energy, nowhere near that workload. Nowhere near that amount of will to win a game. The crowd are behind them now. The outgoing manager must be sat scratching his head, but that's football."
Burnley, whose last three-point haul came against Stoke City on December 12, remain seventh in the Premier League table after Saturday's games.
Daniel Lewis
