Lambert positive despite a Gray day at Turf Moor
PAUL LAMBERT has set his sights on promotion with Blackburn – next season – after watching Lancashire rivals Burnley move back to the top of the table.
Andre Gray’s 16th- minute penalty – awarded after Shane Duffy brought down George Boyd in the box – was enough to decide a surprisingly lacklustre Lancashire derby.
But only several late stops from home keeper Tom Heaton denied Rovers from claiming at least a point.
“I thought we should have won,” said Lambert.
“I am as confident as I was the day I first walked through the door – I have a group of lads that I think are top players and, if they can get a little bit of help this summer, let’s see what can happen next year.
“We are close to being a right good side. They’re a great group to work with and with a bit of luck we would have got something.”
The strike was 24-year-old Gray’s 21st League goal of the campaign, with Leyton Orient’s Jay Simpson the only man in the top four tiers of English football to have netted more. Rovers huffed and puffed in search of an equaliser, but they failed to score in a League visit to Turf Moor for the first time since October 1963.
Burnley’s unbeaten run in the Championship now stands at 12 games, but there were long stages of this encounter where they looked far from the country’s in-form team.
The visitors acquitted themselves well in the game’s opening stages, and it took a daft challenge from Duffy to break the deadlock.
As Boyd controlled the ball with his back to the goal, the Rovers defender clumsily stretched out a leg – leaving referee Mike Jones with little choice but to point to the spot as the Burnley player crumpled to the ground.
Gray smashed the resulting spot-kick straight down the middle with the confidence of a man who has scored three times in the past two games.
Elliott Bennett almost grabbed an immediate equaliser when he dug out a shot from the edge of the area which was clawed away by Heaton.
Hope Apkan’s deflected shot was also kept out by the Clarets skipper moments later, as Blackburn enjoyed their best spell of the match.
The second half followed a similar pattern as Burnley seemed content to contain Rovers, whose inability to turn possession into chances made frustrating viewing for both their 2,000 suppor ters and an increasingly animated Lambert on the touchline.
When Rovers did carve out an opening, Heaton was there again – tipping a deflected shot from Bennett around the post and saving comfortably from Ben Marshall.
The Clarets defence has only conceded one goal in their last eight home games, although they will probably need to play better than this moving forward to secure promotion.
“It was cagey and awkward, but I’m delighted we came out on top,” said Clarets boss Sean Dyche, whose side moved back above Middlesbrough.
“There are different ways of winning, and we are showing that. Within our recent run there is a great mixture of how to win games.”