Russell Martin | I take responsibility for Burnley defeat

Russell Martin admits he has taken responsibility for Swansea City’s defeat to high-flying Burnley.

First-half goals from Jay Rodriguez, Anass Zaroury and Vitinho saw the Swans trailing by three at the break, while a second for Rodriguez killed things off early in the second period.

It was a difficult afternoon for the Swans who went into the game on the back of four consecutive wins and started relatively well, but Burnley got their tails up after going ahead and never really looked back.

“I think it’s my fault,” he said.

“Looking ahead to Burnley a couple of weeks ago, I had an idea in my mind of what we were going to go with but because we’d won four games in a row, we just tried to keep it the same really. I have to take responsibility for that.

“We started the game really well. To go in 3-0 down at half time was ridiculous, they had five shots on target and scored four.

“We started the second half brilliantly – two great chances with Joel [Piroe] and Ben [Cabango] from set pieces. We don’t take them and then get punished for that and it’s game over.

“It’s been a tough, tough day for us, the worst one we’ve had this season. I’ve just said to the players there that we need to make sure that this is the worst we feel this season.”

The Swans’ tough day on the road got worse when, with 15 minutes remaining, Joel Piroe was shown a straight red after an incident with Clarets midfielder Josh Cullen.

"He's telling us he hasn't meant to do anything, he's just trying to get out of the boy's way. We have to trust Joel on that because he's such an honest and brilliant lad,” added Martin.

"It'll depend on how it looks on the footage. I was really surprised the red card came out. The ref was very close, he's a very good referee and he's made that decision so we'll have to look at it.”