Heaton thriving on underdog tag

Sean Dyche’s side used it to their advantage last term when defying the odds to gain promotion from the Championship. And they’ll be hoping it serves them with similar success this season in their quest for Premier League survival.

“That’s something we’ve talked about,” he said. “It’s something we try and use. You can be successful I think if you use the underdog tag.

“It’s difficult for teams, they don’t quite know what to expect, we’re new into the league so we like to think we’re going to make it difficult for everyone. It’s always nice to prove the doubters wrong.”

The 28-year-old former Cardiff City and Bristol City stopper accepted that it was understandable for outsiders to doubt the Clarets after going 11 games without a win in all competitions, but insists the pessimism never swept through to the dressing room.

“The Hull game was defining, getting that first win,” said Heaton. “Everyone was writing us off a little bit and saying it had been a terrible run, which you’re always going to get if you don’t win. We never felt that was the case.

“Now we’ve got it everyone’s belief floods in and back-to-back wins in the Premier League for promoted sides is top drawer really.

“On the back of the win last week the table didn’t look that bad considering we’d had a ‘bad run’, so to get back-to-back wins and six points is massive and hopefully we can go and kick on.”

Heaton added: “You can’t afford to be cut adrift. That’s why after getting that first win it didn’t look too bad to us, we were still right in there, there are two points separating five or six teams, we just need to keep our heads down, keep working hard and we’ve got the belief that we can go on and get some good results.

“We’ve got internal expectation, externally there probably isn’t an awful lot. We really have got a lot of belief in the squad and hopefully we can use that to our benefit.”