Keeping calm and focused is important

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Frank Lampard brings his Chelsea team to Turf Moor for a second time and he’ll be hoping for the same sort of result as last season when they returned to London with all three points from a 4-2 win.

Lampard’s team have been busy in Europe this week with a trip to Russia but and now face the Clarets at Turf Moor. Speaking about Burnley on his return to England this week, Lampard said: “I think with the Premier League it brings different styles but I do get wary of trying to box off Burnley as that game, trying to compare them to an old Wimbledon or a stereotype.

Embed from Getty Images“I don’t see that. I see a team that are very strong at set pieces and crosses into the box because they have physical players and they do that part of the game well. But when I saw a team that played against Tottenham for instance last week, they tried to move the ball, they try and play sometimes through the lines, they have players like McNeil who have quality on the ball and can try and find passes. Brownhill and others.

“I don’t think we should overstate the fact that they are a direct team. They have that weapon. They also can play. I’ll make the players very aware of that and of course the physical nature of the game, because that’s what it is in a game like this. The players need to grasp that very quickly because they’re a very effective team.”

This fixture last season was the last game before Sean Dyche’s seventh anniversary as manager; today it is the first game of his ninth year in charge and, as we all know, he’s looking to get a first win of the season against a team who have a good Premier League record at Turf Moor.

Boosted by the performance, if not the result, against Spurs, Dyche said: “If we keep doing as we have in the last two games, we will look after ourselves with results. If we do, I know from the history of this club and the data that we have on these players that we’ll get wins. The margins are tight and in the last two games, at West Brom and here against Spurs, we played really well, so I don’t think we are far away, but we do have to get the details right.

“Keeping calm and having experience in the team both help. I’ve been down this road before a couple of times and the Premier League is always a big challenge. We know statistically there will be tough spells in a season, but keeping calm and focused is important, as is the experience level in the group. Most of them have had a number of years in the Premier League now and they too understand that it’s an unforgiving placed to be.

“Most teams don’t give you anything and you have to play hard and play well in every performance. You can’t switch off, so there’s an awareness of the challenge and we have to turn it around. That’s just how it goes, but we have to believe in the work we put in on the training ground and bring that into games. In those last few games we have and now it’s about consistency.”

Dyche had, I think it is fair to say, a difficult transfer window. Chelsea didn’t and he added: “After a really strong season last time, the window opened and they spent a lot of money, so there’s a different kind of pressure now. At the end of the day, it still takes a cooling off period while things gel though and I can only imagine that Frank is trying to find the right balance.

“However, we do know that they still have very good players and can affect things from the bench because they have a deep squad, so we know against teams like this that you have to be on top of your performance levels. If we stay focused for 90 minutes, we can definitely take on another top team and see where that takes us.”

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