GARY O’Neil stressed how the squad at Cherries “needs some help” – believing the team are “basically the same group as we had last year".

Cherries fell to a fifth straight defeat at the weekend, with Championship side Burnley capitalising on numerous errors to advance to the fourth round of the FA Cup.

Despite stressing just how strong his players were working to turn around their fortunes, O’Neil pointed out how “ruthless” the Premier League could be for newly promoted sides.

He told the Daily Echo: “We're looking to add, and the group needs it.

“The group needs some help.

"A great set of lads that will work extremely hard for you. But as I said, we've not added loads.

“The Premier League is ruthless.

“Generally, the three that come up, they struggle.

“Nottingham Forest, I don't know what they spent - was it £180million or whatever they spent, a decent amount.

“So, we're working hard, but, yeah, the group needs some help and hopefully this month we get it.”

O’Neil went on to explain in further detail how he viewed Cherries as being “similar” to the side that earnt promotion from the Championship last term, hinting that the club had not strengthened over the summer.

Referencing Burnley’s better record than Cherries own last term, O’Neil also seemed to imply Burnley were in better shape than his own side.

Cherries picked up 49 points from their opening 26 fixtures, leaving them second behind Fulham.

“If you look at Burnley, I think they're on 56 points from 26 games in the Championship,” he continued.

“I don't know what we had after 26 last year, but it's probably more than we had.

“We haven't added to the group, really, so that we're similar, you know, we added Marcus Tavernier, who's been massive for us.

“We added Neto and we added Marcos Senesi, so that's basically the same.

“We're missing two of those (Neto and Tavernier due to injury).

“So that's basically the same group as we had last year, against a side that are going to be in the Premier League again next year.

“I'm working hard with them, as always.

“So that is the case whether they're winning or not. When you're losing football matches, it becomes harder, of course.

“But as I said, there is an understanding of where we are at this moment and where we need to get to.

“And there is a process to fix it. There's no magic wand.

"So, yeah, we're working hard to fix as many of them as quickly as we can.”