BRIAN Laws has vowed to strengthen during the January transfer window, despite being impressed by his new players at Old Trafford.

The new Burnley boss admitted there were “more pluses than minuses” from Saturday’s 3-0 defeat to Manchester United, in which he made his first assessment of the squad he inherited from Owen Coyle last week.

“We’re disappointed to see a scoreline of three because it doesn’t really reflect the game for me, and the performance and the effort that the players have put in,” said former Sheffield Wednesday boss Laws, who saw strikers Steven Fletcher and David Nugent miss good chances, in either half, when the scoreline was 0-0.

Nevertheless, he is determined to make the improvements he feels are required to boost their Premier League survival bid in the remaining two weeks before the market closes.

“I feel like we will need to strengthen anyway because I want no regrets at this football club.

"The last thing we want to do is do no business in the transfer market.

"When that door shuts there’s no turning back,” said Laws.

“We’ll try to do some business to strengthen the team so that in our last 17 games it gives us a better opportunity of staying in the division.

“I’ve told the players it’s a clean slate for everybody.

"I’ve got to assess the squad. However, I’ve got to make some brutal decisions because I haven’t got time.

“I have to make quick assessments, and there’s no better way to do that than to come to Manchester United, because you find out a lot about the players.

“There are more pluses than minuses.

“I thought our gameplan was good, particularly the first half, and the first hour, and we had a real golden opportunity early in the game with Fletcher going through on a three v one situation.

"I thought we counter-attacked so well and caused them problems, and you’ve got to take your opportunities.

“I said to the players, you will have your moments in games like this.

"You might not have as many as you’d like, but when you do come to places like this you take (your chances) and unfortunately we didn’t take that early opportunity.

"But I thought we had an even better one in the second half with Nugent clean through.

"I think he just got a little bit of a push in his back by Neville and it just put him off his final touch.

“That would have been an interesting story had we got that first goal, and I’m sure we’d have been interested to see what kind of reaction we’d have got from Manchester United because I thought there was a moment in the game where it went really quiet, and that’s a good plus for us when the crowd go quiet.”

Extending Nugent’s loan deal was among Laws’ priorities on being placed the Turf Moor hotseat last week, and he hopes progress will be made on that front.

“Nugent I thought had an excellent performance for us and we’re going to try hard to make sure that we secure his services at the football club,” he said.

“He really likes it here and the fans like him as well so we’ll try to do something, certainly over the next 48 hours (as of Saturday).

“The one thing the club was trying to do prior to me coming was to keep David at the football club.

"All I’ve done is embrace it because I know enough about him.

"If you want to stay in the Premier League you need to keep your good players and he suits Burnley Football Club at the moment, and he’s proved that.

“I spoke to him a few days ago and he’s determined he wants to stay.

“However, there’s a lot of talking to be done between ourselves and Portsmouth at the moment.

“Negotiations are already underway and we know that he can’t go anywhere else on loan because he’s had his two clubs, so the ruling is he can’t go anywhere else unless it’s a permanent deal.

"So he can stay with us, or they sell him.