Full-back Stephen Ward urges Burnley to keep right mentality as they chase first away win at Sunderland

The Turf Moor side made life very tough for Liverpool as they chased a first away win of the Premier League campaign, only to come up short again, losing 2-1.

Now experienced Republic of Ireland cap Ward is urging his team-mates to show the same positivity as Burnley look for their away breakthrough at the Stadium of Light.

“They will be well up for the game and have probably earmarked this one as a game they need to win to give themselves a good chance,” said Ward ahead of the clash with the bottom-placed Wearsiders.

“We need to go with that mentality as well.

“We performed very well up there in the FA Cup game (a 0-0 draw in Janaury) and I feel if we an go with the same attitude, mentality and performance level we had at Anfield last Sunday, we will give ourselves a really good chance of picking up something from the game.

“We have 10 big games left.

“We will take every game one at a time, but you want to get that next win as soon as possible.

“We have lost a couple on the bounce now and had a couple of draws, so we need to get back to winning ways as soon as possible and hopefully we can do that this Saturday.”

Burnley sit in 12th place on 31 points, 12 ahead of the Wearsiders, who were thumped 4-1 at Turf Moor in the previous league meeting on New Year’s Eve.

The Clarets have since knocked Sunderland out of the FA Cup, winning their third round replay 2-0 after a 0-0 away draw.

Incredibly, they have picked up just two points on the road this term, and Ward was disappointed to miss out against Liverpool, who only had three strikes on target in their 2-1 victory.

“That’s probably been the story of our away form recently,” added Ward on burnleyfootballclub.com.

“Performances have really improved. We look a lot like the team away from home that we are at home.

“Unfortunately, little things just haven’t gone our way and we’ve been very unfortunate not to pick up the win that’s eluded us all season.

“We feel if we keep working hard and putting the performances like we did on Sunday, then that away win won’t be too far away.

“There’s a lot of talk from outside about our away form and we know ourselves it’s not good enough not to have picked up a win so far.

“But we don’t approach any game differently.

“I think our mentality has been really good over the last couple of weeks, so we just look ahead to the next one and approach it in the same way.

“If we can put on a similar performance as we have done in the last few away games then we will give ourselves a chance of taking that win, finally.”