'The truth': Sean Dyche discusses Burnley's risk-averse recruitment strategy during his reign

The 53-year-old spent over nine years in the Turf Moor hotseat, achieving unprecedented success – keeping Burnley in the top flight for a number of seasons and even qualifying for Europe in 2018.

But during his spell, Dyche was given a reputation of only wanting to sign British players – leading to his Burnley being given a “Brexit” tag.

That transfer strategy has come full circle in recent years, with the Clarets looking well beyond these isles in search for players around the globe under ALK Capital, and especially under Vincent Kompany.

During his recent appearance on The Overlap, Dyche discussed the differences between his Burnley and Everton teams and went on to address how his recruitment strategy at Turf Moor came about.

“I don’t think [the work ethic] wasn’t the same, it was just different, because you’re dealing with different characters and different skillsets. You can’t expect them all to just be robots and all alike,” he explained.

“I think the difference at Burnley is that they all began to believe in it. Obviously their careers were growing, the whole club was growing, so you believe in what you were doing.

“I think that was a longer process, while at Everton we tried to build a bit of that but not taking away from the fact we probably had a bit more talent in certain players.

“It was just two completely different clubs with different groups of players. But some of those Burnley lads were very underrated, you know? Because of the mass perception of what you do, you hear all about the Brexit football and all that…

“When I went into Everton I answered all these questions. I didn’t mean to, but they said: ‘you can’t manage a big club’. Well I managed a big club in turmoil, so that’s one thing. I was told I couldn’t manage foreign players, but we had lots of foreign players at Everton, so at least I’ve ticked that box.

“At Burnley they all said ‘he won’t do this and he won’t do that’. Do you want to know the truth at Burnley? The board used to say to me ‘we don’t want to make mistakes’, so therefore you go back to your knowledge, you find youth team coaches, heads of education at various clubs to go back to look at players and their past, because we were trying to sign good characters.

“Even that, it was funny in the media because they’d go ‘is it fair to say Sean you only sign good characters?’. Well you wouldn’t want to sign any good characters, would you? I couldn’t believe it, it was as if it was some kind of magic wand. Who wants to sign a load of divs?”

Dyche was speaking to The Overlap, in association with SkyBet

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