Heaton earns praise after key saves

Heaton made two key saves in either half from point blank range, first from Luke Varney, before an even better stop from El Hadji Diouf.

He was eventually beaten 11 minutes from time by Matt Smith’s header, but the Clarets held on to win 2-1 and go second in the Championship.

Dyche said: “I thought our lads stood strong and when needed, Tom Heaton twice - one of them was a truly awesome save.

“Tom Heaton made two massive saves. That’s what he’s there for but keepers don’t sometimes get credit for those moments but I’m sure he will.

“Billy Mercer does some good work with the keepers and there’s a nice little group there.”

And he looked back on the game as a whole: “In the first half we were very good, we kept the ball well. It’s a tough place to come and we dealt with the feel and emotion of the occasion, because it’s a big ground.

“We scored two good, goals, effective finishes, Scotty (Arfield) and (Sam) Vokesy reacted very quickly - and in the second half we expected a reaction.

“We had a brilliant chance from some fantastic play for Danny Ings, Paddy Kenny made a fantastic save, to be fair to him, which would have killed it at 3-0.

“That seemed to almost revive them, and in the last 20, 25 minutes they got it forward quicker and it was hard to play against.

“We know teams will have chances, and there will be the need for the odd big save, but we gave a really thorough performance.

“The job in hand is to take the lead and stop them from scoring, it’s as simple as that.

“We did enough to win the game and we had to make sure the basics were done well in the last 20 minutes.”