Yates rues missed chances

Yates rues missed chances

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."

Still, 62, earlier this week ended a nine-year stay at Victoria Road, his second spell in charge of the club, and brought an end to a reign which had seen him become the fourth longest-serving manager in the country behind only Sir Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger and David Moyes.

Still had taken the Daggers from the Conference to League One and back to League Two again but opted for a fresh challenge back in non-league football at Luton, with unconfirmed reports suggesting he has penned a bumper contract at Kenilworth Road.

Dagenham, in an official statement on Tuesday, admitted that their initial shock and disappointment had been replaced by respect for Still's wishes and all he had done for the club, with the powers-that-be at the Essex outfit even waiving significant compensation in favour of a nominal fee to allow Still to make the move he desired.

And managing director Thompson said: "John goes with our best wishes. He definitely built upon the work that Ted Hardy and Garry Hill had done previously and he took us to a different level, the likes that we'd never seen before.

"We're disappointed that he's decided to go but we wish him well."

Thompson added: "I and the board took the decision that, after everything he had done for us, it would be...what's the right word?...immoral maybe, to hold him against something that he wanted to do.

"I've known John for 30 years and Monday was hard. One side of me knows we've got a manager we don't want to lose; another side of me knows there's a lot of money there at stake which we could well have done with, but equally you've got to respect a man who has done what he's done for us but now feels it is the right time for a new challenge.

"We'd already said we would give John a testimonial game and we've agreed to keep that even though he's left us. It wasn't supposed to happen for another two-and-a-half years so no plans have been made for it!"

First-team coach Wayne Burnett has taken the reigns on an interim basis until the end of the season and will be in charge for Dagenham's League Two match at Bradford on Wednesday night.

Yates' side bossed the opening 45 minutes and took a deserved lead after 24 minutes, midfield maestro Pack hitting home a 20-yard effort that squeezed past Fleetwood stopper Scott Davies.

They could have doubled their advantage before the break, Davies tipping Sam Deering's blast over the crossbar.

The Robins looked in total control, right up to the moment Fleetwood equalised through Junior Brown with a bullet header from a Ryan Crowther corner.

Yates said: "We were in control of the game. One mistake from a corner has ended up costing us.

"We've drawn a lot of games recently but this is one we really deserved to win. But you've got to stand up and be counted and do that for 95 minutes. Unfortunately one split second has cost us.

"We've had some great chances. But that's just the way our luck is.

"Later in the week we've got to try and take the positives from it but at the moment I don't feel like thinking about that."

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