Scott Parker feels Burnley showed Premier League standard in win at Southampton | OneFootball

Scott Parker felt his side showed their Premier League credentials by dumping Southampton out of the FA Cup.

Marcus Edwards climbed off the bench to score a debut winner as the Clarets won 1-0 at St Mary’s.

Edwards, the former Tottenham youngster who joined the Clarets on loan from Portuguese side Sporting Lisbon on deadline day, pounced 13 minutes from the end of an attritional encounter on the south coast.

With the Premier League’s worst team meeting Europe’s meanest defence, goals were always going to be hard to come by but Edwards at least spared the 15,000-odd supporters who bothered to turn up at St Mary’s the prospect of extra time.

The Clarets, revelling in the ‘Boring Boring Burnley’ tag bestowed on them by opposition fans this term, kept yet another clean sheet – their sixth in a row in all competitions, their 10th in 11 matches and their 23rd of the season.

The criticism from their own supporters remains that they do not score many goals, either, but Parker hopes Edwards can help remedy that.

“All round I’m really happy with the performance and victory and I thought we were well worth it,” said Parker.

“We changed our system and the players executed the plan to a tee. Brilliant to score a goal and get the win. This was like a Premier League game and that was their strongest team.

“I was really pleased for Marcus and he’s someone we need to take care of now. But I thought he was brilliant when he came on.”

Burnley’s defence, which has conceded only nine league goals this season – fewer than any team in Britain and less than any in the top two leagues in Spain, France, Germany and Italy – was  almost breached only once after a mistake by back-up goalkeeper Vaclav Hladky, whose attempted clearance went straight to Ryan Manning.

But Hladky, in the starting XI as one of eight changes made by Parker, recovered well to block Manning’s shot, with Joe Worrall completing the clearance.

And, with extra time looming, Edwards mercifully broke the deadlock after Hannibal Mejbri’s hook across goal deflected into his patch for a simple finish.

“I feel great, scoring on my debut, getting the win and going through to the next round, it feels nice,” the 26-year-old told BBC Sport.

“It’s incredible, the whole team, the way we were defending. It’s 20 unbeaten now, which is great. The whole club, we are focusing on promotion but also on this competition as well.”

It knocked the stuffing out of Saints, who had picked up only their second Premier League win of the season at Ipswich last weekend.

Saints boss Ivan Juric said: “I’m frustrated with the result, I thought we had a really good performance.

“We were unlucky to lose to a scrappy goal. We had lots of chances to score. We did lots of good things and created lots of opportunities.”

Midfielder Flynn Downes was left out of the squad after seeing a deadline day move to Ipswich fall through, with Juric adding: “You can disagree with the coach or the club but you still have to train hard.”