Clarets boss Dyche aiming to use two-week break wisely on and off the pitch

Burnley don’t have a game until a week on Saturday at Sunderland after being knocked out of the FA Cup, and Dyche intends to use the time wisely after an intensive run of games over the festive period.

Dyche said: “We’ll just be training, working, ready for the next one - they are the things that count.

“We’ll try and give the players a bit of balance, a bit of downtime at the weekend as well as training, that’s appropriate, but we’ll be analysing the Palace game, making sense of it, ready to move forward again.”

Defeat against Palace, and the break, doesn’t necessarily intensify the search for players within the transfer window, which Dyche maintains is a pain-staking process when you don’t have the finances to cherry-pick players: “I think Saturday was a two-off because we had one other performance this season when we were off the mark and got beat, but generally I’ve been happy with the performance levels.

“As regards the market, it doesn’t change the situation, you’ve still got to align players that fit the model of the club, it doesn’t miraculously mean there’s more money because we lost, and can miraculously align more players.

“It’s always going on, it’s just who we can align, who fits the model of the club financially, who fits the team model and how we can use that wisely.

“But that’s been going on for month after month.”

Asked whether there was a chance of new faces by the time Burnley visit the Stadium of Light, he added: “We’ll see.”

But Dyche will have players back from injury to face the Black Cats, with striker Lukas Jutkiewicz missing the last two games: “Juke will be fit, he got a cut on his foot, it’s just that it will open up, it’s on the crease of his foot, so that will be alright.”

However, the likes of Matt Taylor and Stephen Ward are not expected to return: “For some of the longer term ones, two weeks will be pushing it still.”