Burnley FC’s Keith Treacy ‘happy to be playing again’

Treacy, 25, is enjoying his best run in the side since late 2011, having started the last four games.

The former Preston man has been something of an enigma since his arrival in the summer of 2011, but, after a fractious relationship with former boss Eddie Howe, he feels he owes Dyche for the faith he has put in him.

Ahead of today’s game at home to Sheffield Wednesday, who he helped to promotion in 2012, while on loan from Turf Moor, the Republic of Ireland international said: “To me, I was never going to play under Eddie Howe no matter what I did.

“When you’re not playing and you think you haven’t got a chance of playing, no matter what you do, you do sort of fall out of love with it, but as soon as the gaffer came through the door you could tell he loved football and that spills into the players, and it really spilled into me.

“It was a clean slate, and the gaffer is a very straight-talking man.

“He’ll tell you what you need to do and if you do it you’ve got every chance of playing.

“That’s what you want as a player, you don’t want to be told lies.

“I quite like the gaffer, on and off the pitch especially as a person. He’s quite straight to the point and straightforward with what he says and I actually believe what he says, which with other managers wasn’t always the case.

“With the gaffer when he says something it’s genuine to help you.”

Treacy accepts he is a more complex character than most to manage, but believes Dyche understands him completely: “I get text messages off the gaffer like I’m texting a mate.

“It’s really quite funny.

“But you’re at ease when you come to the training ground, you never think you’re going to get a rollicking for no reason.

“The last time I believed a manager, it was probably Phil Brown at Preston.

“Mark Hughes at Blackburn was good. When he called a spade, it was a spade. He didn’t lie to you, although you probably didn’t like what he had to say, he wasn’t lying.

“There have been a few good ones and a few bad ones but I’ve made my own mistakes along the way.

“I think I’m starting to grow up under the gaffer.

“His man-management for me has been top class. I really can’t speak highly enough about him.

“When the old gaffer left here, I was lower than a snake’s belly, but the gaffer came in and really built me up. He does that.

“He told me it wasn’t going to be a quick fix, and it’s about this time now that he predicted I’d start coming back.

“I’ve had little ins and little outs but he’s pretty much hit the nail on the head to be honest.

“There’s just something about him that’s infectious.

“He’s like a close friend and he’s made me fall back in love with the game.”

Treacy revealed he was warned against making the move across Lancashire by Brown, who felt Howe was too inexperienced at the time to handle the winger: “Phil Brown told me that going to Burnley would be a mistake.

“Obviously they (Preston) were in League 1 and I was playing for Ireland at the time.

“He said ‘You’ve a young manager and he won’t know how to read you, he won’t manage you right’ and in my opinion it sort of did work out that way.

“But the gaffer’s come in now and it’s a different chapter in my career.

“Hopefully I can just keep moving onward and upward with the gaffer.

“There’s just something about the guy he just knows how to read people - especially me...which is frightening!”

And he would love to pay back the trust invested in him: “I feel like I owe him so much.

“I think for everything he’s done for me as a person I really wouldn’t want to let him down.

“I feel the club as a whole hasn’t got the best out of me yet.

“We can make excuses or whatever about that but the fact is I haven’t played my best football yet.

“I feel there are still a good couple of years to come for me, and I’d like to do that with Burnley.”

Treacy is playing for a contract, with his current deal set to expire at the end of the season, and he explained: “That was the aim at the start of the season.

“Me and Mark Howard, the sports scientist, are quite close and he said ‘I’ll get you fit for a new contract’, and that’s what we’re still trying to do.

“I’d love to stay.

“If it doesn’t come it doesn’t come, it’s not the end of the world. As I’ve always said you don’t get too high with the highs or too low with the lows, just play football and see what happens.

“It’s the first time I’ve played four games on the bounce for quite a while and I’m hoping to make it five and then six and just take games as they come.

“The more you play the more it comes easier to you, you rattle games off and you get through them. It’s just a thing that you do, whereas if you keep coming in and out of the team you get quite cold.

“I was getting used as sort of an impact sub, and I was actually getting brought on when we were winning as well to tie up games.

“But I’m delighted to be playing now and I’ll do all I can to keep playing.

“I’m just happy to be playing football, it’s what I get paid to do and it’s nice to be playing again. Hopefully it continues.”