JOEY Barton insists Championship leaders Burnley will not be swayed by outside influences as they plot their own promotion path.

Hull City missed the opportunity to move back into the top two after having to settle for a 1-1 draw at home to Nottingham Forest on Tuesday night.

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Instead it was Brighton who climbed the table, overtaking Middlesbrough to claim second spot with their 1-0 home win over Reading, which trimmed Burnley’s advantage from seven points to six.

Both Middlesbrough and Hull, who face each other at the Riverside tomorrow night, still have a game in hand on the Clarets.

But Barton said: “At the end of the day no matter what happens, if we keep winning games and take care of ourselves we don’t have to worry about anyone else.

“And we don’t really worry about what anyone else is doing. Obviously you look at results and see how teams have gone, knowing that it’s about us and about what we do, and that’s quite a powerful message.

“When teams start looking round and seeing what everyone else is doing you can sometimes lose focus on what you’re doing.

“It’s very important to us and it’s drilled into us every day that we focus on what we’re doing.

“You know what our gaffer’s like, how intense he is, there’s no way we’re going to knock off.

“The way we train and everything we do, we just seem to be getting stronger and stronger.”

Burnley have not lost a league game in 2016, and go into Saturday’s home game with Wolves looking to match the seven-game winning streak their produced in their last promotion campaign of 2013-14.

Sean Dyche’s side are 15 league games unbeaten in total, and Barton believes the turning point came on Boxing Day.

“Since the loss at Hull we kind of haven’t looked back,” he said.

“That was a real disappointment for us, we felt we never performed.

“I think we were seven points behind Boro with a few games in hand at one stage and their manager spoke about it publicly, which I felt was a strange thing to do with so many games to play.

“Everyone expects them with their budget and how much they’ve spent - there’s a lot of pressure on that football club.

“This is a place where we enjoy playing. It’s a tough place to come for any team. It always has been and even more so now.”