Football Ramble Drop In - Ben Mee

[jedi_master]

Clear that Ben Mee (and presumably other players) had a strained relationship towards the end with Dyche.

Dyche was probably quite frustrated with the performances of so many of his stalwarts, who let him down last season just as much as his own decision making at times let them down. This probably led to some fractious team meetings - pure guesswork. I think the likes of Mee will speak more honestly over the impact Dyche had on their careers after a few years have passed from the event, it's probably still raw and quite bitter and with blame being apportioned into each camp by the other.

The truth lies in the middle - Sean Dyche was an exceptional manager for Burnley FC, and made a lot of decent players (like Ben Mee) have careers they would likely not have had but for the impact he had upon them. In retrospect (and, clearly not as I personally saw it at the time - so I will say I was wrong, which is now clear) the atmosphere internally had clearly become strained and the only parting of the ways that could possibly change things was the manager. It's very candid of Mee to say that they wouldn't have stayed up had Dyche stayed anyway, as that's always been my 'What If?' about last season. It feels it was an accumulation of years of stalled investment, years of the team hearing the same tactical routines and ideas and also the gradual decline due to age of some of our better players. It seems relegation was an inevitability.

They were halcyon days for a period (probably 2013-2020) and perhaps the change over we have just had should have transpired somewhere around that period at the outset of Covid. This would have been for the good of Dyche as much as the club/players, as things clearly were just so stale within the club and with the takeover acting as a sort of weight on the clubs shoulders preventing any progress we were trapped in a stalemate.

It will be interesting to see how Dyche does at his next club and whether his own negative experiences of the parting of the ways at Burnley have diminished his powers. I hope not, as long as it's never to Burnley's detriment I wish him all the best and thank him for a period I never thought I would see at my club. It would be nice if 'alls well that ends well' applied to everyone after what happened. It seems to have worked unbelievably well for us, and for Ben Mee/Tarky/McNeil so far.

[ClaretPete001]

Learned a lot from this interview from a guy who seems to be a very rounded and honest individual.Supports a lot of what I was fearing, the biggest lines I heard on it were that we had run out of ideas, and that we were rather fortunate not to have been found out in earlier seasons too.Interesting too that he was a different man for the media than to the team. Did not sense any love for him

I think SD looking back will know he had a fabulous position at Burnley, where he almost became bigger than the club. He got them consistency and a long spell in the PL,and got huge loyalty and patience back from the club. But he is never ever going to get a position like that again, and only has to go on one of his famous run of winless games that stretches 7 or 8 matches or more, and he is out on his ear. If he leaves it much longer to get a new managers job he will be quickly forgotton by the outside world

You've cherry picked the comments. His point prior to running out of ideas was a lack of investment and the loss of Chris Wood.

The first is probably the reason for the last because things do get stale when new talent isn't coming into the club. And few on here would accept the second as a reason so.....! Bit of balance and all that.

[claretspice]

My theory for some time has been that apart from the fact Dyche got jaded by the perpetual cycle of keeping Burnley competitive on a shoestring, which probably reflected in a "lack of ideas", the departure of Tony Loughran was pivotal. As I understand it, Loughran was the approachable, genial one of the 3, and Dyche and Woan always more distant from the players. Replacing Loughran with Stone whose reputation was more austere, shall we say, altered the dynamics perhaps irreparably and probably altered the players perception of Dyche himself (particularly of Dyche felt obliged to side with his coaches if issues arose).

The balance of light and shade on a coaching staff is IMO a critical, and often overlooked from the outside, element of getting the best of out a squad. I think once Dyche lost that at Burnley he lost something essential.

[FeedTheArf]

As they say, hindsight is 20/20 vision!

As others have said, I think the turning point was the Europa season. For a lot of our players it would be the highest level they would ever play at, and to make the repeated team selections that he did it was clear he just wanted to bin it off. Granted, we were never going to win it, but to get a few big European nights in would live long in the memory of players and fans alike.

Yes we finished 10th but that was the COVID year and everything was thrown out of kilter with no fans. Some teams adapted better than others.

Dyche has mentioned in one of his many podcast episodes that there was a chance he’d leave at the start of last season. Instead he signed a new (4 year!!) contract. That was naive on Pace’s part as I think he just wanted to appease the fans but for Dyche’s part he’d run out of ideas. I don’t profess to be a tactician and often don’t pick up on shape and pressing etc, but even I knew what the players were going to do 3 passes before they did it, so opposition teams would’ve had no problem counteracting it.

When Wood left he did an interview saying he was in his comfort zone and got pelters for it (from me included from memory!), but it wasn’t just him, it was the whole club from top to bottom that was in its comfort zone. Players, coaches, Dyche, even pundits all had the belief that we would come good and get out of our situation.

It’s taken a relegation and change of manager, but it feels like the club has woken up. Kompany and his team have brought such a freshness to everything on and off the pitch. I honestly don’t think we’d be anywhere near the same position as we are now if Dyche was still in charge. That’s not to take away from his extraordinary achievements during his time here, but there’s no way we’d have had such an influx of youth and flair if he was still here.

[Holdo]

A few weeks ago I had a chat with someone who was in the changing room. A bit like Ben Mee was very respectful when the subject of Dyche was raised and said that the team still wanted to believe in him until the end. He said that things had started to change over the final two seasons, where as once he was all over every small detail he had become more distant. He wasn't involved in training any more and wasn't around as much. For away games he'd stopped staying with the team and would turn up the following morning or at the ground. The view was that he was cultivating an image with the media but the reality behind the scenes was different. The other major issue was that some of the main players had moves blocked and that affected both their performances and the overall team morale. Like I say he was at pains to say there were no major bust ups etc but clearly the formula that had been so successful for many years had started to unravel.

[jrgbfc]

How many teams our size finish 7th?

Not bloody many

Expecting us to kick on from there with the long term injuries to three of our best players was (and still is) a tad unrealistic

And again, that home game v Olympiakos we absolutely battered them and Vokes missed two chances that he would normally bury

It happens

Whilst our best goalscorer by far Chris Wood sat twiddling his thumbs on the bench, in a game we knew we had to score at least two.

[ClaretPete001]

Whilst our best goalscorer by far Chris Wood sat twiddling his thumbs on the bench, in a game we knew we had to score at least two.

It seems curiously typical of the forum two distill two promotions, 1 EFL Championship win and 7 years in the PL to two games in the Europa League.

Perhaps you had to endure 7 seasons watching dross in Division 4 to truly appreciate Sean Dyche

[Jimmymaccer]

No issues with Dyche- came to the club steadied the ship then brought us some amazing times. To me, a combination of factors brought his time to a close but something must have happened, or at least came to ahead around the Norwich/Brentford matches. It was as though the players gave up (and I don’t mean professionally, they were just shocking performances and so unlike Burnley).

And then Dyche and all his team were cleared out.

As for what’s happened since, blimey not bad so far!

And as for Ben Mee - will always be a Claret.

[SammyBoy]

Regardless of the Europa League games, Dyche’s attitude to cup games generally was awful. Fair enough, I get that sacrificing the cup for the league is a necessary evil at times but to down tools like we did vs Lincoln was utterly baffling, and the part of the Dyche era I still can’t get my head around. We were 10th in the league after 23 games (I think) and whilst not mathematically safe it’d have taken a spectacular collapse to be relegated from that position. Win vs Lincoln and we’re 3 games from winning the cup, not saying it’d be likely but let’s have a go at it eh? I remember being livid after that game.

[Jimmymaccer]

Regardless of the Europa League games, Dyche’s attitude to cup games generally was awful. Fair enough, I get that sacrificing the cup for the league is a necessary evil at times but to down tools like we did vs Lincoln was utterly baffling, and the part of the Dyche era I still can’t get my head around. We were 10th in the league after 23 games (I think) and whilst not mathematically safe it’d have taken a spectacular collapse to be relegated from that position. Win vs Lincoln and we’re 3 games from winning the cup, not saying it’d be likely but let’s have a go at it eh? I remember being livid after that game.

I came across from The Isle of Man that day and on the flight to Blackpool was a Lincoln fan - a good lad who thought they’d get well and truly thumped. Save to say when I saw him on the return journey, he made the most of it!

[claretonthecoast1882]

Never really got the blame towards Dyche for the Lincoln game, it comes across as times we put an under 23s side out.

Heaton
Darikwa Keane Tarks Flanagan
JBG Westwood Barton Arfield
Vokes Gray

Is Dyche to blame for thinking this 11 should beat Lincoln at home ?

He is gone, we had some great times while he was here. Some will look back on his time here and have enjoyed what occurred - some won't.

[claretbob]

It’s always hard for Clarets who live outside the area to truly appreciate Dyche’s achievements. The monkey on our backs was the 30 plus years of Rovers dominance and we were all reminded of that every day of our lives. Within 18 months of taking on the job he masterminded a first win in over 34 years against that lot and had a 7 match unbeaten run. To people of my age it is still surreal to think that most teenage Rovers fans have no memory of beating us and I love reminding them of that fact.
Thanks to SD we have have all been able to walk tall and I for one took tremendous pride in our achievements. He didn’t bother much with cup games but there was one in particular on 2017 when he very definitely did and we wiped the floor against our opponents that day. I only met him once and he didn’t seem to have the incredible charisma and charm I felt in Owen Coyle’s presence but I know who I prefer as a man and a leader of my football club.

[JR1882]

Stopped listening to the ramble after years, not really a fan of the new format at all, just tune in occasionally when there’s a stellar line up or for OTC.

[Raconteur]

My theory for some time has been that apart from the fact Dyche got jaded by the perpetual cycle of keeping Burnley competitive on a shoestring, which probably reflected in a "lack of ideas", the departure of Tony Loughran was pivotal. As I understand it, Loughran was the approachable, genial one of the 3, and Dyche and Woan always more distant from the players. Replacing Loughran with Stone whose reputation was more austere, shall we say, altered the dynamics perhaps irreparably and probably altered the players perception of Dyche himself (particularly of Dyche felt obliged to side with his coaches if issues arose).

The balance of light and shade on a coaching staff is IMO a critical, and often overlooked from the outside, element of getting the best of out a squad. I think once Dyche lost that at Burnley he lost something essential.

I think Spice has it quite spot on with his assessment. Other posters have said the same regarding Loughlan.

I even think Dyche alluded that Loughlan was a very important member of the coaching staff in one of the recent podcasts ( Maybe the one with Foster).
He mentioned that whenever we were going through a bad patch, Loughlan would whip out his magic folder and pull out some training sessions or patterns of play from previous years that would reignite the group.