Burnley stumbled to their third defeat in a row as two late goals from Ivan Toney condemned them to a 2-0 defeat at Brentford, ending a run of four unbeaten matches in the capital for the Clarets.
It took 85 minutes for the deadlock to be broken and Burnley had been right in the game up until that point — Jay Rodriguez went close with a vicious effort from range which clattered the crossbar — but Toney followed up his headed opener with a goal from the penalty spot after he had been felled by Nathan Collins in the penalty area, a challenge for which the centre-back was then dismissed.
Manager Sean Dyche addressed the media after the match — these were his most noteworthy quotes.
On losing it late
The visitors came so close to a point at the Brentford Community Stadium which, in all honesty and despite their current predicament, they would probably have taken — to throw it all away in the final few moments of the encounter was extremely disappointing, but the manager claimed that prior profligacy was to blame just as much as the defensive errors which lead to the two goals.
"It's the reality of the Premier League," said Dyche. "I must say, it's a great cross, but we should've dealt with it better. There's big frustration because when you can't find the win, you don't lose. We kept them minimal for a home team and we had chances with Maxwel [Cornet] and [Dwight] McNeil but we didn't capitalise in those moments and got punished."
On the penalty and sending off
Deep into stoppage time, Burnley were hit with an arguably harsh double-whammy when Collins was sent off for his nudge on Toney in the box, and Dyche was a little perplexed by both that and the decision to award a penalty in the first place from referee Paul Tierney.
"I thought it was a soft penalty. I don't really understand why you get a red card for that — apparently it's for a nudge on the upper body but that didn't make much sense to me."
On goalscoring woes
This was a tight match, but it wasn't one without its fair share of chances and a handful of them had fallen Burnley's way. They got into a number of good positions but, with hindsight, perhaps failed to test Bees goalkeeper David Raya as much as they should have done. Dyche sympathised with his forwards after an afternoon in which they didn't get the rub of the green.
"I said to the players afterwards that it's the hardest thing in football to score a goal, and that's why strikers make the most money, but we also need the freedom and creativity in the right moments. Wout looked tired today, he's put so much effort in — we did create some chances but it's not easy to play like Man City."
On remaining level-headed
The scoreline tells the tale of a pretty comfortable win for Brentford but it was far from it. Burnley were right in this contest until the very end and Dyche insisted there was nothing about the performance which worried him in spite of the late collapse.
"Over the season the margins have been tight in a lot of our games," he claimed. "A moment can change a performance; you can look at any loss and immediately decide it's a bad performance but it's my job not to do that. It's very delicate to judge a performance accurately but I wasn't too disappointed."
On the run-in
The silver lining for Burnley is that they still have 33 points to play for. When asked if the each of the last 11 matches of the season was in effect a cup final, Dyche came up with a great response.
"If I said we have 11 cup finals left — well, you know how difficult it is to win one!"
The manager is, unsurprisingly, keeping the faith despite another setback in west London. Burnley have been in this position before but it will now take a monumental effort to secure their Premier League status for a seventh straight season.