Burnley boss Sean Dyche on Norwich City dismissals: 'If you do raise your elbow to someone's head, or face, you've got a chance of getting sent off'

The Canaries duo were given their marching orders before the break as Argentinian playmaker Buendia reacted in an off-the-ball incident with Ashley Westwood before Swiss striker Drmic was punished for a reckless challenge on Erik Pieters.

Both moments were reviewed by VAR, with Lee Mason in position at Stockley Park, while Friend opted to use his pitchside monitor to assess Buendia's use of an elbow in the 35th minute.

"I didn't see the first clearly, I quickly saw it on the screen at half-time," said Dyche. "I've spoken about this a lot, but, the game is so weak physically now, you can't touch anybody, so they go down.

"If that's the case, if you do raise your elbow to someone's head, or face, you've got a chance of getting sent off.

"And I think he did raise his arm and it was an intentional arm movement.

"Therefore you put the referee in a predicament to send you off. He doesn't need to do it, and the second is unacceptable."

Burnley then capitalised on their numerical advantage on the stroke of half-time when leading scorer Chris Wood converted Johann Berg Gudmundsson's centre.

Daniel Farke's side, as expected, switched to two flat banks of four in the second half in an attempt to keep the visitors out, though they were breached once more as Ben Godfrey put a Pieters cross into his own net.

It was a record 15th Premier League victory of the season, which lifted the club up to ninth in the division and just one point short of seventh place Spurs.

"Strange game, a good goal regardless of how it went in, that kind of saw us through the first half and set us up for the second," said Dyche.

"I've only experienced the nine men once, against Chelsea, but that was a different kind of game, they flooded forward.

"It was different today, two banks of four, I haven't witnessed that before, without a centre forward up there.

"We had to work to try and break that down, we didn't really do it too many times against such a packed defence, but we asked enough questions, they made a mistake and the game's done then.

"We come away with a nice victory and another clean sheet."