Burnley 1-0 Stoke: Ashley Barnes fires a late winner to send Clarets surging into the top four

Ashley Barnes struck a late winner to send Burnley into the top-four.

Substitute Barnes lashed the ball into the net in the 88th-minute to send Sean Dyche’s side past Tottenham, Arsenal and Liverpool into the coveted Champions League spots.

The dramatic late winner saw the Clarets move into the top four of the top-fight for the first time since March 1975 at a freezing Turf Moor.

On a filthy Lancashire night, with an unrelenting icy sleet swirling around the exposed stadium, Burnley showed their strength of character to register a deserved win.

For Stoke, the misery continues after last Saturday’s 5-1 mauling away at Tottenham, with boss Mark Hughes under renewed pressure as the visiting fans turned on him again.

Stoke’s fans, who want Hughes out, turned on their boss in the 84th minute when he took off Xhedan Shaqiri, their most creative player, shouting ‘You don’t know what you’re doing’.

Saturday’s defeat to Tottenham sparked ugly scenes with around 200 Potters fans confronting Hughes and his players as they left the train at Stoke, abusing them for such an abject display.

Hughes tried to spin the confrontation into a positive, claiming it could actually serve to jolt his side from their slumber and prove a turning point in their troubled season ahead of the trip to Turf Moor.

But history was not on the side of the visitors, who had not won a top-flight game away from home on a Tuesday since April 1906, a miserable sequence of 53 matches that stretched to 54.

Stoke conjured the first chance, James Tarkowski failing to deal with an inswinging ball, allowing Peter Crouch clipping the far post, with Burnley keeper Nick Pope alert enough to clear the danger.

The visitors forced a corner four minutes later, slung in by Shaqiri, from which the unmarked Kurt Zouma was able only to steer the ball straight at Pope.

Diouf was presented with a further sight of the Burnley goal after 20 minutes, rising to meet a Ramadan Sohi cross, but was unable to direct his header on target.

At the other end, England keeper Jack Butland did not make the best of starts in front of watching national boss Gareth Southgate, spilling a cross from Stephen Ward after 24 minutes.

Apart from that error, Burnley failed to work Butland in the first-half, Tarkowski getting on the end of a Johan Gundmundsson free-kick but never troubling the Stoke keeper.

Burnley began to play with more fluency as the half-hour mark approached, Steven Defour finding Ward on the overlap, but his cross was too far in front of the advancing Chris Wood, arriving in the six-yard box.

The Clarets were forced into a change just before the break, with summer signing Charlie Taylor coming on for his Premier League debut in place of the injured Ward.

Gudmundsson produced a dangerous free-kick just before the hour, but it managed to elude Tarkowski and Kevin Long at the far post, as another opportunity was squandered.

Stoke had to make an enforced change in the 65th minute when Kurt Zouma pulled up with a hamstring injury, the defender replaced by Kevin Wimmer.

Burnley made the decisive breakthrough with two minutes left, Barnes and Scott Arfield combining with the latter scoring to send the Clarets into unchartered territory in the modern game.