Clarke Carlisle aims to make up for lost time at Burnley

11:00am Saturday 5th July 2008

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CLARKE Carlisle hopes missing the first two games of the new season will not prove damaging to the rest of his campaign.

The towering defender will be forced to sit out the 2008-09 opener at Sheffield Wednesday on August 9, and Carling Cup first round clash with Bury the following Tuesday, after his early red card in the final game of last season.

Carlisle was sent off just five minutes into the clash with Crystal Palace following a clumsy challenge on Scott Sinclair, which resulted in Ben Watson scoring the first of the Eagles’ five goals from the penalty spot.

But, once he has served his punishment, Carlisle hopes to spring back into action just a week after the beginning of the new campaign.

“I’m going to have to pay the price of a bad decision at the end of last season,” said the 28-year-old.

“It puts me out of the picture for the squad for games against Sheffield Wednesday and Bury, but hopefully I’ll do enough in pre-season to get back in after that.

“It’s frustrating but there’s nothing I can do to change what happened.

FROM BACK PAGE “It happened so quickly, when I got to the dressing room I thought it was so ridiculous after four or five minutes for that to happen.

“It was just a really bad decision from me and a hasty one by the referee, but he made the right one. I gave him no choice. But hopefully I can learn from that and make sure it doesn’t happen again next season.

“For now, I just have to get my head down and get on with it.”

Carlisle is permitted to be involved in the Clarets action-packed pre-season friendly campaign, and admitted he is relishing next week’s tour of America, where Burnley will play games against United Soccer Leagues sides Carolina RailHawks and Minnesota Thunder.

“It should be a very good trip. I’ve never been to American to play football before so it should be very interesting to see what it’s like and we’ll hopefully get a lot of work done,” he said.

“Pre-season’s been going really, the whole squad came back with an excellent base level of fitness and with the work we are doing the lads are looking strong.”