"This is incredible!" - Alan Pace reacts to unbelievable Burnley FC exploits | OneFootball

Burnley owner Alan Pace has praised his team's remarkable defensive record on social media.

Burnley owner Alan Pace has taken to social media to praise his team's remarkable defensive record in the Championship this season.

Burnley were relegated from the Premier League last season after just one year in the top flight, but despite losing manager Vincent Kompany and a host of key players during the summer, they are among the automatic promotion contenders in the Championship this campaign under the guidance of head coach Scott Parker.

It has been an excellent few months for the Clarets, and they extended their unbeaten run to 18 league games with a 1-0 win over Oxford United at Turf Moor on Tuesday night, with Michal Helik's 33rd-minute own goal sealing all three points.

The victory moves Burnley up to second in the table on goal difference, but with Parker's men in FA Cup action this weekend, they will drop out of the top two if Sheffield United avoid defeat at home to struggling Portsmouth on Saturday.

Alan Pace reacts to Burnley's incredible defensive record

Burnley's outstanding defensive solidity continued against Oxford as they kept their ninth consecutive league clean sheet, and they have now recorded 22 shutouts in total this season.

The Clarets have conceded just nine league goals this campaign, with the last of those coming in the 2-1 win over Watford in December, and that is 10 fewer than the next best defence in the Championship, Leeds United.

According to Opta Analysis, Burnley have conceded five fewer goals than any team from the top two divisions in Spain, Italy, France and Germany, and they have even conceded less than Jose Mourinho's Chelsea side did after 31 games of the 2004-05 campaign, when they set a record for the least goals conceded in a Premier League season with just 15.

Those impressive statistics have not gone unnoticed by Clarets owner Pace, and sharing the article on his Instagram story, he wrote: "This is incredible!! So proud of our team. Literally the best defence in Europe."

Burnley have drawn 0-0 on 10 occasions this season, with almost a third of their games ending in that scoreline, and their matches have seen the fewest goals per game in EFL history at just 1.48, but Parker hit out at criticisms of his side's style of play last week.

When asked if he is bothered by accusations that his team are boring, Parker told the Burnley Express: "No, it doesn't bother me too much.

"Like I’ve said many times, defensively we've been pretty remarkable. We've been very, very good on the defensive phase. But that’s not the way I solely want to see us getting promoted, we want both sides.

"That's not a sole decision on us or certainly me as a coach. We’ve not decided: ‘okay, let's just be this defensively rock-solid team that get to the end of the season and hope we get promoted’. We want both, that's the intention."

Burnley cannot rely on clean sheets for automatic promotion

It is difficult to disagree with Pace that Burnley's defensive record this season has been incredible, and Parker and his team deserve huge credit for their solidity at the back, but clean sheets alone will not be enough for them to achieve promotion.

The Clarets are averaging fewer than 1.0 non-penalty expected goals per game, and their goalscoring problems were highlighted once again against Oxford on Tuesday night as they needed an own goal from the visitors to secure victory.

The lack of a prolific goalscorer could be costly for Burnley in their pursuit of automatic promotion, and while the signing of winger Marcus Edwards on loan from Sporting Lisbon could help to provide the creative spark they have been missing, Pace may live to regret not spending big on a new striker during the January transfer window.