Sean Dyche pleased as season approaches halfway point

Sean Dyche is pleased with his side’s progress as they go into Christmas fifth in the Championship.
Sean DycheSean Dyche
Sean Dyche

Burnley ended a sixth-game run without a win by easing past Charlton 4-0 at Turf Moor on Saturday.

Their day was improved by defeats for Brighton, Boxing Day opponents Hull and Ipswich Town, leaving the Clarets five points adrift of second place.

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We hit the halfway stage of the season at the KC Stadium on Saturday, and Dyche, asked for his assessment of the season so far, said: “Generally I’m pleased.

“It still takes time for teams to mould. We’ve had big players leave this club, and we’ve managed to bring in what we feel are very good players.

“It’s still moulding and forming.

“The ideal thing you can get as a team is inner confidence, there is a lot of noise out there about us, and rightly so, we’ve been in the Premier League, have a bit more money than we had in the past, we’ve lost some really good players, but signed some really good players.

“I said they have to live with that, the expectation changes, but biggest of all is our own.”

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And Dyche countered perceptions that his team have had a blip in form: “Its been a big learning curve for us over this number of games, and of course we’ve been on that ‘awful’ run over the last 10 games, where Brighton have got 15 points, and we’ve got 16 - it’s my job to look through all the noise and see the facts.

“If I asked how Brighton were doing, you’d say ‘fantastic, amazing, they’ve been flying’, fact. My job is to look through the noise, look at what we’re doing, what we intend to deliver, and move it forward.

“Thats not to say we wouldn’t have hoped for more points from this period, of course we did, but performances have not been a million miles away in my opinion.

“And it was spot on on Saturday.”

He added: “Brighton have drawn two and lost one, if they were to draw or lose the next one, suddenly are they on a bad run? That’s just the perception, and yet they’ve only just lost their first game.

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“When do you chunk the games down, how many do you put in a chunk?

“The perception changes when we win like that, ‘they’re back on it’.

“The gap closes, we’re chasing the top again, ‘yeah, they’re back on it’.

“I guarantee it. We weren’t a million miles away.”