'It's my fault!' Russell Martin's stark admission…

'It's my fault!' Russell Martin's stark admission after Swansea City crushed

Russell Martin accepted full responsibility for Swansea City's 4-0 defeat to Burnley and stated it was his side's worst afternoon of the season.

The Swans started well in Lancashire but were punished for numerous defensive mistakes, with Vitinho and Anass Zaroury both netting to add to a brace from Jay Rodriguez as Vincent Kompany's men secured an emphatic victory at Turf Moor.

It was Swansea's joint-heaviest defeat under the current coaching staff and brought an abrupt end to their four-game winning streak in the Championship.

"It hurts. I think it’s my fault," said the head coach. "Looking ahead to Burnley a couple of weeks ago, I had an idea in my mind of what we were going to go with but because we’d won four games in a row, we just tried to keep it the same really. So I have to take responsibility for that.

"We spoke about it, I had an idea in my mind of how we wanted to come here and maybe just adapt a couple of bits.

"When you're winning, it's really difficult to do that because the guys have been in such a good place. We just didn't see the response we've had in recent weeks after we went 1-0 down really. We lacked a bit of courage and the fear crept in a little bit.

"We're playing against the best team we've faced since we've been here probably, the best squad, the best team, they're really good so you have to give them a lot of credit.

"It’s been a tough, tough day for us, the worst one we’ve had this season. I’ve just said to the players that we need to make sure that this is the worst we feel this season.

"Big shout out to the fans – they were unbelievable, even at 4-0, singing the whole way, they deserved more today. We’ve had some brilliant away days recently, today was a very difficult one."

A wretched afternoon for the Swans was compounded in the 74th minute as Joel Piroe was shown a straight red card by referee Stephen Martin following a collision with Josh Cullen.

The Dutchman had been fouled by the Burnley man and appeared to react by stamping on Cullen, with the referee having no hesitation in giving the striker his marching orders. He is now facing a three-game ban for violent conduct, ruling him out of Swansea's matches against Reading, Cardiff City and Bristol City.

"I haven't seen it back enough yet," said Martin. "He's telling us he hasn't meant to do anything, he's just trying to get out of the boy's way. We have to trust Joel on that because he's such an honest and brilliant lad.

"It hurt us tonight but hopefully it doesn't hurt us moving forward. We'll have to have a look at it to see if we can appeal it.

"It'll depend on how it looks on the footage. I was really surprised the red card came out. The ref was very close, he's a very good referee and he's made that decision so we'll have to look at it."

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