GEORGE Boyd felt Burnley had missed a ‘huge opportunity’ to reach Wembley after the Clarets were knocked out of the FA Cup by non-league Lincoln City.

Victory would have put Burnley into the quarter-finals for the first time in 14 years and left them one win from reaching the national stadium, but an under-par display saw National League leaders Lincoln City take a 1-0 victory and become the first non-league side to reach the last eight in 103 years.

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The Clarets have been a formidable prospect at Turf Moor in recent times and this was only their fourth defeat at home in 441 days, which made it even tougher to take when it looked their home record could carry them all the way to the FA Cup semi-finals with a favourable draw.

“It’s a huge opportunity missed to be in the quarter-finals, we could have got another good draw at home and you could be at Wembley,” said Boyd.

“It’s a massive opportunity missed but we’ve got bigger fish to fry in the Premier League so we’ve got to set our sights on that now.”

Boyd, who came on after 20 minutes following an injury to Johann Berg Gudmundsson, felt the Clarets had been dragged into Lincoln’s gameplan.

“You’ve got to give credit to Lincoln, they made us play their game, they made it a horrible game and we got sucked into that,” he said.

“But credit to them, they used their strengths well and they got the win.

“They’ve got a big lump in front, two big centre halves and the pitch didn’t help either, that played into their hands a bit.

“They use their strengths well. When we did play in between and pass the ball we opened them up a bit but we just got sucked into their long ball game.”

The Turf Moor pitch was again far from perfect, something that was noted by Sean Dyche as well after the game.

But Boyd was reluctant to use that as an excuse and admitted Burnley only had themselves to blame.

“It’s our own fault,” he said. “We should be good enough to play on any surface. The pitch didn’t help but we weren’t at our best.”

The FA Cup exit leaves Burnley with just the Premier League to focus on.

The Clarets remain 10 points clear of the bottom three with 13 games to go and they start a run of four successive away games at Hull City next weekend.

Boyd insists there will be no hangover from the FA Cup shock as they look to put the finishing touches to what has been a memorable league campaign.

“It’s gone now. Monday we will be at it and it’s another huge game next weekend and hopefully we’ll get the three points,” said the 31-year-old.

“It comes from the gaffer, he parks it straightaway and it’s done and we need to react next weekend.”