Burnley defender Tyrone Mears believes the club deserve more credit than they are receiving for the start they have made to life in the Barclays Premier League.

The Clarets host Wigan on Saturday and stand 10th in the table having won all four of their league fixtures at Turf Moor since their promotion from the Coca-Cola Championship.

Their away form has been a different story though, with the 3-2 defeat in last Sunday's east Lancashire derby at Blackburn making it five losses out of five for Owen Coyle's team on the road.

It is a statistic that is threatening to overshadow the club's otherwise impressive return to the top flight, but Mears believes Burnley's critics are looking for any excuse to undermine the team's efforts.

"They are looking right now at the away form and they will try anything to put the club down," said Mears.

"I think it's important that the fans and everyone associated with the club, the team, we all stick together.

"It is due to the manager and the staff the way that we play, the way we pass the ball, the way we move and attack. I think we should be given credit for that.

"A lot of teams that come up and want to stay in this league try to play direct, but we feel it is better suited to our team to try to pass the ball and we have the players that can do that."

Mears joined Burnley on a three-year deal from Derby in the summer after spending a spell on loan at Marseille last season.

He has started every league fixture since then as Coyle's team have continually upset the odds, and the 26-year-old was full of praise for his new manager and the work he has done with limited finances.

"He's a fantastic manager. Everybody knows what he has done for this club," Mears said.

"You have to look at the budget that he has had, taking players that have been in the Championship and players that are really standing out now in the Premier League. I'm sure there will be a lot of clubs looking at our players."

Coyle is likely to have the same squad available for the Wigan fixture as he did for the defeat at Blackburn, a game he felt the team were unlucky to lose.

"There's disappointment after you lose any match and Sunday was no different, particularly given the fact of the local rivalry and everything else that goes with it," Coyle said.

"But we have to move on and pick ourselves up for a massive game at home against a very good Wigan side.

"There were lots of positives to take from the game, but there is certainly stuff to work on too. We'll look to take our medicine and bounce back, and look to do so quickly.

"We went a goal in front - there was no doubt that it was the right approach.

"We needed to take more care with the ball, particularly in the first half and we shot ourselves in the foot with some self-inflicted goals that we lost.

"But we showed character and dominated the second half - the stats back that up, in terms of the passes we made during the game.

"There was a 10-minute spell where we let ourselves down but aside from that there was a lot that we could take from the game."