Coventry City boss Iain Dowie revealed in his post-match press conference that Leon Best has handed in a transfer request.

The manager said that he left Best out of the squad to face Burnley as he didn't feel that the striker was 'mentally prepared' for the Clarets game, but added that he does not want Best to leave the Club.

"There has been a lot of speculation about Leon moving to Nottingham Forest and he came in yesterday and put a transfer request in," revealed the Sky Blues manager.

"I just think he wasn't in the right frame of mind to play today and that he should go away and have a little think about things over the weekend.

"When you've got lads giving their heart and soul I didn't think it was right to play a lad who had expressed a desire to leave the Club."

Dowie added: "I'll recommend to the Board that the transfer request is turned down, especially at the size of the offer as it is now, but I just thought it was right to leave the lad out of the team.

"Leon is a young lad and maybe he hasn't been advised properly. My view is we brought him in as a big player for this club and let's not go over the top because he's done great for us in some games this season, like at Blackburn a couple of weeks ago.

"He's a young man, he'll make some mistakes but I'm sure he'll come back and be better than ever for us."

Speaking on the game itself, Dowie felt the Sky Blues were unfortunate to lose out to the Clarets in a tightly fought contest that he believed swung on the sending-off of striker Kevin Kyle for two bookable offences.

"You're never happy when you get beaten, especially at home where we have let our fans down too often this season but what I will say is that even with ten men there was a fantastic desire from the boys, trying to drive the game forward.

"We had good opportunities today - we had 15 crosses and 13 shots in the first half alone. It was a disappointing result but I cannot fault the desire, I cannot fault the hunger and there were some positives.

"The manner of the goals was very disappointing for us and the game hinged on when we weren't given a penalty, they went upfield, we got a man sent-off.

He added: "Kev can look back on that decision because it certainly wasn't one of the best that he's made when he was on a booking.

"In terms of how we drove on I don't think the sending-off really affected things because we still drove forward and we still had chances."