Sean Dyche's thoughts on a heaviest defeat of the season at home to Chelsea

Sean Dyche admitted his Burnley side "stopped doing all the basic principles of what we were doing” after shipping three goals in eight minutes after a goal-less first half.
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The Clarets slipped to their heaviest defeat of the season, as the World and European champions Chelsea ran riot in the second period, with Kai Havertz netting twice to add to a Reece James opener and one from Christian Pulisic.

Burnley had had more and better chances in the first half, with Dwight McNeil missing the best of them, and Dyche said: "You hope you're not going to pay for it (missed chances), but we did, first half I thought we were excellent, the gameplan was delivered by the players, kept it nice and tight, shape was excellent, kept them playing around our shape, never really broke us down.

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"And we had the best chances, one falls to Dwight, you'd like it to go in of course, but we're completely in the game at half-time, but after a really poor goal, it really affected us so clearly, for eight minutes, and it 's just the madness of football sometimes.

BURNLEY, ENGLAND - MARCH 05: Christian Pulisic of Chelsea celebrates after scoring their team's fourth goal during the Premier League match between Burnley and Chelsea at Turf Moor on March 05, 2022 in Burnley, England. (Photo by Lewis Storey/Getty Images)BURNLEY, ENGLAND - MARCH 05: Christian Pulisic of Chelsea celebrates after scoring their team's fourth goal during the Premier League match between Burnley and Chelsea at Turf Moor on March 05, 2022 in Burnley, England. (Photo by Lewis Storey/Getty Images)
BURNLEY, ENGLAND - MARCH 05: Christian Pulisic of Chelsea celebrates after scoring their team's fourth goal during the Premier League match between Burnley and Chelsea at Turf Moor on March 05, 2022 in Burnley, England. (Photo by Lewis Storey/Getty Images)

"You can concede, but it doesn't stop you from doing what you were doing, all it means is you have to do it even better, so you can get back in the game.

"We just lost sight of that, opened up too quickly, like we thought we had to score straightaway, against a team that have only conceded 18 goals.

"Then the second goes in and you're worried, and the third...the game's gone then.

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"So, really confused by that eight or nine minutes, we'll debrief it with the players because it's not like us, especially over the last eight or nine games.”

Asked what went wrong, Dyche added: "We stopped doing all the basic principles of what we were doing, and physically lost out in a couple of challenges, didn't keep our shape, didn't work as quickly in transition, and got punished by a group of very talented players.

"We know there's been some noise about Chelsea, but I still look at the players and see they have some handy players, without doubt.

"We had to continue to do the things we had done in the first half – keep the shape, play forward but with quality, play simple but effective football, which we had done so well in the first half.

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“And we just lost sight of it. Too many gaps, changeovers of play, too many loose challenges and before you know it teams of this quality have hurt you and they did today.”

Skipper Ben Mee was ruled out with the knee injury picked up in the defeat at home to Leicester on Tuesday, but Dyche didn’t feel that was necessarily a factor, with Nathan Collins again showing much promise: "Hopefully it will settle down this week, it was a close one but it wasn't right, he couldn't walk properly.

"But it's a knock so hopefully that will be quicker to settle down, it's a bad knock, not a twist.

"That's no slight on Collo (Nathan Collins) again though, because I thought he did well - it wasn't an individual thing today, it was a collective thing.

"That eight minutes was a collective thing, it wasn't about individuals.”