Scott Parker issues Burnley FC warning involving Leeds and Sheffield United | OneFootball

Scott Parker is blocking out Leeds United and Sheffield United to remain focused on Burnley in their bid to seal automatic promotion

Scott Parker has insisted he will not be focusing on results elsewhere as the gap continues to widen between Burnley and the two automatic promotion slots, both of which are currently occupied by Leeds United and Sheffield United.

Burnley have the Championship's longest unbeaten streak, which stretches all the way back to the beginning of November.

But an accumulation of draws - 14 to be exact, across the course of the season - has seen them often struggle to truly keep chase in sight of the league title, and the gap separating themselves and second-placed United was widened to five points following the disappointing 0-0 stalemate at rivals Preston North End on Saturday afternoon.

The Clarets are next in action tomorrow evening when Sheffield Wednesday travel to Turf Moor in what simply must bear all three points for the home side in their pursuit of automatic promotion as they look to bridge the gap.

At some stage, they will need results elsewhere to go their way in order to make up ground and edge closer to the top two, with both sides set to lock horns in a crunch showdown at Bramall Lane on Monday night.

Scott Parker warns Burnley squad to avoid looking at Leeds, Sheffield United results

Parker has reiterated his intention to remain solely focused on his side's results, defining Leeds and the Blades' fortunes as an "absolute irrelevance".

After being asked if the widening gap could have any effect on his squad, the 44-year-old told the Burnley Express: "No, not really.

"I only said it to the players this morning, I'll never jump on a rollercoaster of what this league and this season brings.

"I've got no real interest in what our competitors are doing, certainly at this point in the season. What Leeds and Sheffield United are doing is just an absolute irrelevance to me.

"Our focus is that, if we're not going to win enough games to generate enough points, then the facts are we're not going to be successful or get to where we need to get to.

"We can't jump on that rollercoaster of emotion over a weekend looking at what other teams are doing or what they're not doing. Five points, six points, whatever the gap is, it's a total irrelevance to me.

"The main focus is every game we go into, can we win? Can we get three points? And by the time we get to April, that may be a different story. Don't get me wrong.

"But at this present moment in time, 13 games left. I think there are many, many more stories and there's many more scenarios that we're going to be facing and you're going to be asking me week in, week out. It is what it is.

"Let's go and win games and try and win as many as we can.

"We’ve got no control over what the other sides do, other than one team because we play them later in the season. Other than that, none of us can control what a certain team does one weekend to the next.

"What we can control is us winning football matches and being as positive and as dominant as we can to win them. And like I said, the cold hard facts are you need to win games. You need to hit a certain marker this year.

"If you want to get promoted, that marker was set at the beginning of the season. It's been set over the last 10 years of teams in the Championship. If you hit a certain point, it gives you a rough gauge of where you need to be.

"We need to keep churning out results and get some wins and see where that leads us."

Burnley FC have a favourable end-of-season run-in

While it's difficult to look too far ahead and Parker will likely be particularly keen for his side to simply take it game-by-game, it must be noted that Burnley's run-in towards the back-end of the campaign appears favourable on paper and could give them an extra boost if the likes of Leeds and Sheffield United drop points.

Burnley will host the Blades in the third-from-final affair of the season on April 21, in what will surely turn out to be a six-pointer for both sides. Apart from that, though, they are only set to face one side currently inside the top-six in West Bromwich Albion, with both Leeds and the Blades having more difficult finishes to the season as per their respective fixture schedules.

The Clarets will play a number of sides down towards the bottom-end of the table, including Cardiff City and Luton Town successively at the start of March.

Of course, the simple caveat is Daniel Farke's and Chris Wilder's sides have both shown themselves to be superior sides to Burnley for much of the campaign, but the Clarets' more favourable fixture list could swing in their favour and mean it may prove impossible to ignore results elsewhere as we head into the dying embers of the season.