Nardiello played through pain

Nardiello played through pain

Published Feb. 27, 2013 1:15 p.m. ET

Sean Dyche has refuted claims his out-of-sorts Burnley side are over-reliant on leading marksman Charlie Austin.

The striker has scored 21 times in the league this season to become one of the Championship's most potent forwards, yet his Clarets team-mates have struggled to find the net with such frequency.

No other player has come close to double figures with Martin Paterson second in the scoring charts with five, and with Austin finding the net just once in 2013, Burnley have slumped to a six-game winless run which suggests they are heavily dependent on the ex-Swindon forward.

However, Dyche does not believe that is the case and highlighted the Clarets' three successive league wins in January, when Austin was sidelined with a hamstring strain, to back up his claim.

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He said: "That's the challenge of the players, to score goals and be clinical.

"Everybody knows you can't rely on one player. When I got here I was being asked questions about Charlie all the time.

"Strangely, when he came back in, we haven't had a good run. That's the madness of it.

"But it's not a one-man team for sure and we've proved that already."

The 6ft 6in 23-year-old came off the bench to head home Jonathan Grounds' 64th-minute corner for a fourth goal in this season's competition, all of which have come against top flight opposition.

Smith has only netted three times in League One this term, but his imposing physicality asked difficult questions that round four victims Liverpool and city rivals Everton struggled to answer.

"We don't really see anyone like that apart from Peter Crouch," said Everton assistant manager Steve Round after the game.

"Whenever the ball's in the air, if a goalie's knocking the ball in the air from 75 or 80 yards away, if you're 6ft 6in then you've got a chance of heading it.

"You've got to compete with that like we did and make sure you pick up the second balls and flicks.

"He scored a good goal from a corner again."

The Millers looked to be heading for an eighth home defeat of the season as they trailed to Matty Blair's 63rd-minute opener until Nardiello, 30, popped up with his 15th goal of the season deep into stoppage time to earn an unlikely point.

But the player would not have been on the pitch had he had his own way after asking to come off to protect a niggling groin injury.

The Millers had already made their three substitutions by then, though, so Evans told him to keep going.

"I've got such a belief in Nardiello at the minute. He has been fantastic for two months, he really has," Evans said.

"He was asking to come off because he was feeling his groin and I just told him he had as much chance of coming off as my missus.

"I told him to get in the box when we got forward and he got one chance and put it away."

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