Burnley boss Dyche hints at shake up at the Britannia

Burnley boss Sean Dyche has implied that he'll shake things up when the Clarets travel to the Britannia Stadium to take on Stoke City.
Burnley boss Sean Dyche welcomes Pep Guardiola to Turf MoorBurnley boss Sean Dyche welcomes Pep Guardiola to Turf Moor
Burnley boss Sean Dyche welcomes Pep Guardiola to Turf Moor

The Clarets have been struggling for form away from Turf Moor having taken just one point while conceding 13 goals in five games.

The latest defeat on their travels, a 4-0 thrashing against West Brom at the Hawthorns, moved Dyche to accuse the performance of his players as “weak-willed”, adding that he’d learned a lot about his players.

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And once more, following the narrow reversal against Premier League heavyweights Manchester City on home soil, Dyche insinuated that he may be experimental.

With Tom Heaton absent at the weekend, and Dean Marney and Johann Berg Gudmundsson adding to the injury list, the Clarets chief may have to make enforced changes anyway.

But the suggestion is that the transformation may go beyond that. “I don’t worry what people think of me, it’s about what we can do to achieve things, and there’s a clear focus,” he said.

“I’m not pontificating, that’s my focus, getting the team in a position to win games, no matter who you’re playing, and against teams like this, we have to change the whole feel of how we play sometimes.

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“It’s another chance, it’s another game, different build up, mentality, we’ve got to rethink our mentality away from home and what we’re about, rethink how we can take maybe different shapes, different formats, personnel.

“The definition of madness is always doing what you’ve always done and expecting a different outcome.

“Not completely rethink, there are certain key core values of what we represent, but there might be different ways of expressing that on the road. We have to do that.”

Burnley were back to doing what they do best against City, though the outcome didn’t back up the performance that was delivered.

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The home side stepped up to the challenge, haranguing City to limit time and space on the ball, and generally made life difficult for Pep Guardiola’s men.

And it was a pleasing response to the set back against the Baggies, though he accepts that injuries placed restrictions on his game plan. “Footballers generally know, but I’ve got an extremely honest bunch here, and we spoke about it on Tuesday.

“We do realities here, these are top class, top of the top, I think, yet to be seen over a season of course, but we accepted that, now what can we do to get something from the game?

“So we worked on what we could do, and I was really pleased. We made it more about us than them. It’s not easy, because they are top class.

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“The injuries didn’t help, but the changes did really well.”

Dyche added: “I think we have a good mentality from the bench, they come on active, ready to make a difference. I would have liked to have got Andre (Gray) on, but we ran out of subs.

“I wanted him to go at their two centre halves and use his sharpness, but we couldn’t. The players saw behind that and delivered a solid performance.

“Managers often understand, not always, what we are. He’ll (Guardiola) have spoken, I imagine, to Kiddo, who I know well, and he’ll have said, this is what they are, they maximise what they are.

“That’s my style of management, if I had their team, we’d work on a completely different game plan, but I haven’t, so we work on one that suits my team.”