Burnley chairman Barry Kilby admits he still can't understand Owen Coyle's decision to leave the club for Bolton Wanderers.

Kilby has sympathy for Brian Laws in the task that he took on.

"January was a massive thing for us, Brian got a real hospital pass," Kilby, who is still smarting from his unexpected mid-season manager search, told the Lancashire Telegraph.

"It wasn't just Owen going, it was the clearing out of the backroom staff that really did for us. We had a manager and coaching set-up in place and in seven days it had disappeared. Owen went on a Tuesday and by the following Monday I had to get Terry Pashley and Martin Dobson to coach the team.

"And we were playing Manchester United at Old Trafford the following Saturday. I certainly didn't see it coming, I wouldn't have thought he would go to Bolton with what he had with the fans and everything.

"If Aston Villa or someone like that had come in, then I could have understood. It was tough to bring someone in, I saw candidates bandied about, but there weren't that many available.

"Many of the southern-based managers wouldn't contemplate coming to north east Lancashire, so it was really a bad time for it to happen."