Source: FOOTYMAD
Howe speaks on Eagles and Mears
Burnley boss Eddie Howe looks set to lose two more members of his first team squad but after the win at Torquay today he vowed to bring in replacements for both Chris Eagles and Tyrone Mears. Howe left both players out today and said after the 3-1 win: "It will be really sad if both lads go. "The difficulty there was the length of their contracts. They only had a year left and would have both left for nothing next summer, so I think from the club's point of view £3 million is a lot of money and hopefully not it's money that we can use to bring in replacements." Howe added: "We always had this in the back of our minds with Chris and Ty, because of their contract situation, so it's not absolutely unexpected. But we hadn't heard anything previously and it happened very quickly yesterday. That's football for you. It throws up unexpected twists and turns and we are going to have to react now." Howe confirmed the club had done all they could to keep the players. "If the lads had three years left on their contracts the fee would be very different, but that's the reality of football. We have tried to make both stay, but they want to play Premier League football and that lure is too great. "We'll just have to wait and see what happens at the end of the day because at this point only the fee has been agreed, but we would be sorry to let them go. It's a difficult one because you want to build a team capable of winning promotion, but at the same time there is the money to think about." It's time to look for new players now. "We are obviously light now on numbers and we need to bring in some quality," Howe added. "The key thing is not to panic and the big challenge now, for us, is to identify the right players. "It does change who we need to look at because we had targets identified before Tyrone and Chris, so we might have to re-think slightly."
