It?s not rocket science, is it? We have the best defensive record in European football but what we don?t have is a strike force capable of scoring enough goals to secure automatic promotion.

In our role of the ultimate yo-yo club, we have had three quite recent promotions from the Championship to the English Premier League; winning it twice and finishing runners-up once.

What separates us now from the certainty of automatic promotion is the absence of strike partnerships like Sam Vokes & Danny Ings, Vokes (again) & Andre Gray, Nathan Tella, Annas Zaroury & Manuel Benson. Those three seasons saw us bag over a hundred goals because of those partnerships and that is the sole reason we will have to try for promotion through the play-offs.

Blaming Scotty Parker for the absence of a strike force is puerile nonsense. Alan Pace must shoulder the blame, he sold Chris Wood, Sander Berge, Wilson Odobert, Annas Zaroury, Wout Weghorst amongst others and failed to secure the services of the now Bayer Leverkusen frontman Nathan Tella.

Our recruitment team stand accused of sleeping on the job and one single word of criticism must go to Scott Parker for insisting on keep playing Lyle Foster. A Burnley supporter on a Clarets fan forum after witnessing the South African miss two glaring chances on Saturday at Deepdale said Foster ?would struggle to finish his tea!? Enough said.