OWEN Coyle admits that Burnley remain hurt by their defeat at Sheffield Wednesday on the opening day of the season – but has insisted they will not be on a revenge mission when the Owls visit Turf Moor tomorrow.

The Clarets lost 4-1 at Hillsborough in their first game of the Championship campaign in August but 44 action-packed games have passed since then in a whirlwind season.

It is Burnley who now find themselves eighth in the table and pushing for the play-offs, while Sheffield Wednesday are four places and seven points behind them.

And with Graham Alex-ander suggesting that Wednesday – managed by former Burnley defender Brian Laws – will now be facing an altogether different Clarets side, Coyle believes that points rather than vengeance should be the focus.

“What happened, happened,” said the Burnley boss, who gave his players two days off earlier this week because of a rare break from midweek action.

“We lost heavily on the opening day of the season, we were’t happy about it in the circumstances but it happened and we moved on.

“We bounced back and showed what a good side we are and it will have absolutely no bearing on Saturday.

“I’m not really getting caught up in it. If that was the case, you can start going back two or three seasons.

“We didn’t sort things out straight away because we then came at home to Ipswich and I think we probably conceded three own goals and lost.

“But I think what we did is we regrouped. We were hurt by it, there’s no doubt.

“It would have been easy at that point to have felt sorry for yourselves and crumbled, with the way it looked.

“After two games we were bottom of the league with a goal difference of minus six.

“Two weeks later, as much as we’d picked up, we’d drawn two games 0-0 and were still bottom with two points. At that point we were probably 10 points behind the leaders.

“But we knew we had a good team and good players and I think it’s enormous credit to the lads that they did bounce back.”

Wednesday, for whom James O’Connor will make his first return to Turf Moor, have by far the worst defensive record in the Championship on their travels but have avoided defeat on their last five visits to Burnley - infamously winning 7-2 in 2003.

The Clarets, who are unbeaten in six matches, should have a full squad to select from with Christian Kalvenes available after a groin problem and Chris Eagles close to full fitness following a chest infection.

Alexander, who is set to make his 46th start of the season in tomorrow’s 3pm kick-off, believes the Clarets need six wins from their remaining six home matches and thinks Burnley go into the game as a much improved side.

“It seems quite a long time ago now,” said the 37-year-old.

“It was a terrible start to the season and it was something we didn’t see coming because we’d had a decent pre-season and we had all sorts of aspirations for the season, then they all seemed to go out of the window on day one.

“But we’ve turned it round a bit and done well so it’s another three points that we need.

“We’re at home so we need to try to win all our home games between now and the end of the season to have a chance of being in the play-offs.

“Sheffield Wednesday are a decent team, which we found out to our cost. But we’re hoping tomorrow’s a little bit different.

“Mentally I think we are a different team but we were confident going into that game and we thought we’d start the season on the right foot.

“But we were 2-0 down after three minutes and all the good intentions go out of the window.

“We followed it up with a 3-0 defeat at home and we could have gone right under there.

“But we showed the spirit to turn the season around.”