Sean Dyche - The Times - 'My players softened up'

[IAmAClaret]

Sean Dyche interview: After qualifying for Europe, it was like my Burnley players softened up
Oliver Kay, Chief Football Correspondent
January 11 2019, 5:00pm, The Times

Dyche insists that Burnley have tried to recruit from abroad, but usually without success

Legs, hearts, minds. Sean Dyche’s three-word mantra hits you at almost every turn at Burney’s impressive Barnfield Training Complex. It is about the stamina to outrun the opposition, the courage to fight until the final whistle and the intelligence and resilience to face up to any challenge. It is, as the motivational signage suggests, “a way of life”.

It certainly was last season, when Burnley finished seventh in the Premier League, pushing Arsenal hard for a top-six finish until the final weeks of the campaign and securing European qualification for the first time in more than half a century. They held Manchester City at Turf Moor, won at Stamford Bridge and Goodison Park, drew at Old Trafford, Anfield and Wembley. Over their 38-game campaign, they made more blocks and more interceptions than any of their rivals while Jack Cork covered a distance of 288 miles, 13 more than any other player in the Premier League.

“That felt like the perfect storm,” says Dyche, their gregarious manager, looking ahead to Saturday’s crucial match against Fulham. “They were playing at the top level of their game, delivering performances. Demand was high, intent was high, the eye of the tiger — that look in their eye — was a definite. And then . . .”

Let us pause for a moment because the story here is that Burnley, having had the season of their lives, have found life rather more arduous this term. Distracted or drained by their run to the Europa League play-off round, they took just one point from their first five Premier League matches. By the time they were beaten 5-1 at home by Everton on Boxing Day, the halfway point of the Premier League campaign, they had already conceded more goals (41) and suffered more defeats (13) than in the whole of last season. An abrasive, up-and-at-em approach had given way to one that at times seemed to border on the passive, as if legs, hearts and minds were jaded.

Burnley’s turbulent past 12 months — the rise, the regression and now what Dyche feels is the beginnings of a resurgence — has told us much about life in the Premier League. Playing at the peak of their powers last season, they proved to be the best team outside the big six. Without that momentum, without that intensity, without that steely focus, the same group of players struggled badly. Now, after victories over West Ham United and Huddersfield Town in the Premier League, which have taken them out of the relegation zone, and Barnsley in the FA Cup, they look far more like their old selves as they prepare for this weekend’s fixture.


So let us pick up where we left off. And then . . .? “And then life changes,” Dyche says.

Qualification for the Europa League, in which Burnley won two-legged ties against Aberdeen and Istanbul Basaksehir before losing to Olympiacos, proved just as disruptive as Dyche had been warned. “I do understand that reasoning,” he says, “but it was the first time this club had been in Europe for 50-odd years. You’re not going to treat that as a negative. But the games started so early [July 26] so you don’t get a proper pre-season in terms of the work you can fit in. Then you lob in a load of injuries and you’ve got this confusion where we’re thinking, ‘We’re in Europe. Let’s go for that’ and we’re also thinking ‘We’ve got to do that too’, ie the Premier League. There was a lot going on that, for a club like ours and a group of players like ours, wasn’t the norm. It got a bit confused for a while."

It wasn’t just the Europa League campaign, though. “It was the first time a lot of these players had become more recognised, the first time the media had shown a bigger interest, the first time they had had European football to contend with,” the manager says. “To get to that level was a big, big change for everyone. I think it took time for everyone to make sense of it.

“You finish the season, you get a few pats on the back and it’s, like, ‘Right, have we got to do that again?’ Yes we have. Or a version of it. ‘Oh, right. OK. . .’ That’s where the real deal become the real deal; they keep going and going and going relentlessly year after year after year. If that’s where you want to be, beyond life at Burnley, then you’ve got to understand all these demands — possible European demands, possible international demands, the demands of being a more recognised player. Whether that’s contracts, kudos, attention, it all goes into the mix and it takes a bit of getting used to.”

Dyche spoke in these pages last season about the need to retain certain “earthy” qualities — “a strong work ethic, passion, pride, care, attention, honesty, respect” — amid what he called the “glossiness” of the Premier League. Is he suggesting that Burnley’s players, magnificently earthy last season, were seduced by the glossiness? Not exactly, he says, “but whether it’s in sport, business or anything in life, you need that edge. Maybe that edge came off for a time.”

Did the data gathered by Burnley’s sports science department reflect that? “There were some differences, but the main one was the intent, even the body language,” he says. “We have been renowned for that relentlessness, that energy, that look in the eye, to take on everything. It’s that eye of the tiger, which we had shown many times. It wasn’t that it had gone — as you can see from the last few performances — but it was as if it had softened a little bit.

“In that situation, you have to do what good boxers do. They go back to the beginning, back to the gym and they work even harder. We had to say: ‘You have to go and get it. You can’t wait for it.’ The players have been tremendous in saying: ‘Let’s remember what we’re about. Let’s find that edge again.’

“When you’re climbing to achieve something, it’s not easy, but you can see where you’re heading. When you reach a peak, some people look around and say: ‘Right, where’s the next peak for me to climb?’ Others look around and say: ‘Brilliant. This is where I hoped I might get to.’ There’s a human instinct either to keep going or to settle. As a manager, it’s for me to say: ‘Don’t just be happy with that. There’s more out there. Go for whatever you can.’”

One difficulty, perhaps, is the competitive imbalance of the modern Premier League. Frequently in recent years we have seen small-to-medium-sized Premier League clubs — Stoke City, West Bromwich Albion, Swansea City, Southampton — reach a certain level and then, either having changed too much or changed too little, drop alarmingly. Leicester City shattered the Premier League’s glass ceiling in 2016, but three years later they are a mid-table team again and the dominance of the big six seems greater than ever. Ambition can be hard to sustain year after years for clubs where it feels like seventh place, with the dubious prize of the Europa League, is as good as it could possibly get.

“We all know the power of those six clubs is enormous,” Dyche says. “The next fight is to get as close to them as you can, which we did last season. Then it’s ‘Where do we go from here?’ With the model at Burnley, it’s pretty unlikely that I’m going to be told: ‘Here’s hundreds of millions of pounds to spend’. Therefore you’re constantly working to develop and improve, looking for little things that can move you forward.

“We’re in a market where everyone spends fortunes. There are clubs who will take big, big risks on players — a big risk-versus-reward scenario. In the last three transfer windows, our net spend has been roughly £19 million. Brighton’s has been £80 million to £100 million. Huddersfield and Bournemouth similar. Clubs like Wolves and Fulham have come up and had a real go. Cardiff probably spent £40 million last summer. At this club the margins are tighter and we have to be sure as we can possibly be with our recruitment. And the moral of this story is that we’re building by design, not by default, not by throwing money. It still has to be moved forward, but in our world, that isn’t likely to be big jumps forward. It’s going to be inched forward. That’s hard, and it can be frustrating, but equally it can be very rewarding.”

Change the clubs and the numbers in the previous paragraph and this could be Mauricio Pochettino explaining the challenges at Tottenham Hotspur. There are some obvious differences in approach, but Pochettino would relate to that — and indeed to “legs, hearts and minds”.

If there has been a criticism of Dyche, it is that he and Burnley have been too conservative — not just in playing style but in recruitment. From his first-team squad, only the former Belgium midfielder Steven Defour was signed from overseas. The only other players from outside the British Isles are Anders Lindegaard (Denmark), Johann Gudmundsson (Iceland), Matej Vydra (Czech Republic) and Chris Wood (New Zealand), all of whom were already playing in England. In the modern Premier League, that is highly unusual.

“We have been trying to look abroad,” Dyche says. “People might think we haven’t, because we haven’t been able to get certain deals over the line, but we’ve tried. What people perhaps don’t realise is that you have to build a system for that and the chairman and the board have had to decide the right time to back that with finance.

“We’ve recently brought in Mike Rigg, whose job [as technical director] is not so much this transfer window, which is very difficult, but to add to the structures we have. There are clubs out there who have been [recruiting from overseas] for years and are miles ahead in terms of contacts, analysis tools and different ways of working. We have been doing somewhat of it for the last few years, but we have usually gone for homegrown talent of one type or another, where we know the players and the background and we have that expertise about them within our network. We’re now taking that operation to another level, but the rewards of that work are going to take time.

“It’s about finding or developing the next level of player for this club — probably finding and developing — while not undermining the culture we have here, which has been rewarding for all. In terms of playing style, again, it’s trying to morph it slowly into something different. That’s not easy because we’ve still got to win games at the same time. You can’t just say: ‘We’ll have a free season and change everything. No need to worry about results.’ It’s finding that blend — trying to improve, trying to develop, moving it forward. It’s been that way ever since I’ve been here. It’s a big challenge. That doesn’t change.”

[bfcjg]

Thanks very good read UTC.

[tim_noone]

SD Leader of men ...faint hearts need not apply! Utc.

[JohnDearyMe]

Good read

[CleggHall]

But what really went wrong at the beginning of this season?
Underprepared for Europe, unprepared for matches on thursdays and Sunday's for the first few weeks, travel problems, too small squad, injuries particularly losing Nick Pope, failure to strengthen in key areas/ positions?
Despite the many (wise) words from SD, we are little further on in our understanding. However we seem to have recently turned a corner and are getting back to our best. Let's hope so.
Dyche is a fine wordsmith!

[tim_noone]

But what really went wrong at the beginning of this season?
Underprepared for Europe, unprepared for matches on thursdays and Sunday's for the first few weeks, travel problems, too small squad, injuries particularly losing Nick Pope, failure to strengthen in key areas/ positions?
Despite the many (wise) words from SD, we are little further on in our understanding. However we seem to have recently turned a corner and are getting back to our best. Let's hope so.
Dyche is a fine wordsmith!

[Quickenthetempo]

A long article of saying nothing. He could be a politician when he retires. Media trained to death.

[boatshed bill]

But what really went wrong at the beginning of this season?
Underprepared for Europe, unprepared for matches on thursdays and Sunday's for the first few weeks, travel problems, too small squad, injuries particularly losing Nick Pope, failure to strengthen in key areas/ positions?
Despite the many (wise) words from SD, we are little further on in our understanding. However we seem to have recently turned a corner and are getting back to our best. Let's hope so.
Dyche is a fine wordsmith!

We should never underestimate the effect that losing Nick Pope had on our season's start, particularly with Tom Heaton not quite ready.
However, whether we have turned a corner or not remains to be seen, beat Fulham first and see where that takes us!

[Devils_Advocate]

[Rodleydave]

Was this in Friday or is it Saturday's in advance

[Bin Ont Turf]

Like your posts, them waffles are over done.

[Devils_Advocate]

Like your posts, them waffles are over done.

[bfcmik]

It reads like SD is saying that there was a bit of 'been there, done that and got the t-shirt' mentality crept in once Europe was confirmed before the Arsenal game last season. It can be difficult when you are receiving lots of plaudits and I believe our players caught a collective 'we are big boys now' bug that reduced the intensity of our play. How many times through that awful September - December spell were I and other supporters crying out for that extra intensity we grew to love last season, that extra fraction of a percent of commitment into getting that block in, pressing the ball or cutting out that pass that made the difference so frequently last season? How many times did I read comments on here about how x player or y player wasn't putting in the minimum effort let alone the maximum effort we demand in our cause.

Hopefully the malady has now been cured and we can claw our way back into mid-table respectability.

[Ashingtonclaret46]

"...................Hopefully the malady has now been cured and we can claw our way back into mid-table respectability."

Come on bfcmik ---you have not learnt from many posters on this board -----you should have said mid-table mediocrity or even less!

[Paul Waine]

Was this in Friday or is it Saturday's in advance

The article was posted in the online version at 5pm today (Friday). Pretty certain it will also be in Saturday's print edition sports section.

UTC

[JinkingJames]

What happened in pre season in my opinion was affected by events within the Ireland squad. Something happened between certain players and the management team at Ireland. The effect was that it may have had an effect in attitude because Keane was very close to Loughlin.


I don't know what happened but Walters was moved out and Ward hasn't featured much ~( I know he's been injured) but the management team seem to have lost confidence in him.

I also think Dyche had 4 months warning of the European tour and didn't recruit. He should have done what Big Sam did, back in the day, and got himself to the World Cup and signed a decent star like Okocha at a reasonable price.

[Paul Waine]

But what really went wrong at the beginning of this season?
Underprepared for Europe, unprepared for matches on thursdays and Sunday's for the first few weeks, travel problems, too small squad, injuries particularly losing Nick Pope, failure to strengthen in key areas/ positions?
Despite the many (wise) words from SD, we are little further on in our understanding. However we seem to have recently turned a corner and are getting back to our best. Let's hope so.
Dyche is a fine wordsmith!

Hi CH, "Despite the many (wise) words from SD, we are little further on in our understanding."

It's very unlikely that Sean Dyche, or Oliver Kay, intends that the article will tells us "what really went wrong at the beginning of this season" - excpet that is exactly what the article is telling us in a way that is designed to give the team the best possible way to get back the "eye of the(ir) tiger."

It's all "good stuff" and exactly what we want to hear; Sean Dyche hasn't "thrown in the towel" - using his boxing analogy, the squad have picked themselves up from the canvas and they are now ready to go again.

That's all we can reasonably ask. That's certainly all I'm hoping for. That and a win over Fulham tomorrow.

UTC

[EarbyClaret]

Thanks for posting - thought that was a good read.

Can't really over-emphasise what a game-changer Nick Pope's injury was 15 minutes into he first competitive game of the season in the last week of July.

If you look at all of the fall-out that caused, one way and another, I think it's reasonable to say it's impact on all of the various issues SD describes above was the difference between an OK start to the season which maybe would have see us sitting lower mid-table and the debacle it became up until December when we saw the first signs of a recovery.

There's a hint of 'we've turned the corner' about that article, which in terms of performance is perhaps true of the last couple of games but there's some real hard yards need putting in to keep us out of the bottom three.

There have been too many uncharacteristically lack-lustre displays so far this season for anyone to start feeling too comfortable just yet.

[biggles]

that interview puts things into perspective and shows just what a massive task THE CLUB faces to maintain premiership survival. we'd all like the club to sign 'big-ticket' players but we have to exist in the real world. we have to manage things. that means, amongst other things, the club have to work within a financial framework. look how many bigger clubs there are in the championship who are struggling to stay in that league. things might not be too rosy in the garden right now [and we probably should have signed a couple of players in vital positions] but hopefully last year's fighting spirit is coming back.

[MT03ALG]

I recommended Maximilian Philipp and Vinzenzo Grifo to Burnley a year or two ago from SC Freiburg.
Freiburg sold them to Borussia Dortmund and Borussia Moenchengladbach for figures we could have afforded.

[Long Time Lurker]

Really enjoyed that read.

An honest appraisal with a strong view towards learning from developing circumstances so we can move forwards. People seem to forget that we are still very much a work in progress.

We are going to make mistakes along the way and come up against things that we don't have an immediate answer to, but if we keep pushing forward with a strong sense of realism and self belief we will continue to get better in every aspect.

[NRC]

Sorry, but if the mantra is “legs, hearts, and minds” then the latter two are man management/leadership tasks. It doesn’t take a degree to recognize, as many on here do, that when it comes to the fine margins SD is often at pains to describe, then those same fine margins will be negative if you allow the hearts and minds to drift - and he did, he et that discipline become loose

[bfcmik]

Sorry, but if the mantra is “legs, hearts, and minds” then the latter two are man management/leadership tasks. It doesn’t take a degree to recognize, as many on here do, that when it comes to the fine margins SD is often at pains to describe, then those same fine margins will be negative if you allow the hearts and minds to drift - and he did, he et that discipline become loose

When you manage teams it is one thing to know that something is out of kilter but another thing to find the correct response necessary to resolve the issue(s). And when you do identify the problem it isn't normally just a matter of finding a single simple solution out of a book or using Google. These guys are all highly trained, highly skilled, highly paid (by normal standards) and highly motivated individuals. Each of them will require a variation of the solution and differing doses of motivating and bollocking to effect the cure.

Those who have been, or are, in any sort of management role will know that sorting things out normally takes a lot longer than three months and often requires lots of money being thrown at consultants and then major personnel changes from top to bottom of the team.

[jrgbfc]

A load of waffle where he seems to be absolving himself of any blame whatsoever for our troubles. Maybe the players lost a bit of movitation when you treated their one chance of playing in Europe like a League Cup 3rd round game Sean?

[Lancasterclaret]

Jesus, can people stop coming out with that stuff

You can't play the same 11 all the time ffs

[jrgbfc]

Jesus, can people stop coming out with that stuff

You can't play the same 11 all the time ffs

Maybe, but he didn't need to spend all summer talking the Europa down and making it clear he couldn't care less did he.

[Lancasterclaret]

Yeah, course that is exactly what he did.

[Stalbansclaret]

What on earth are you on about jrgbfc ?
Good article...for those saying it is just "waffle" or that SD is saying nothing which managers do you think speak more openly and articulately than ours ? There really is some pitiful criticism on this thread. I assume these posters are applying for football manager roles to show SD how simple it is ?

[Hipper]

Dyche, as conductor of this orchestra, is ultimately responsible for the poor season so far. He can blame what he likes in the players but it is his failure, or lack of ability/experience, that has caused it. If he learns from it, that will be good for him, but if he learns from it whilst at least keeping us in the Premier League, that's what we want.

We've beaten one in form team well, another out of form team who had ten men - the worst team in the division, and now face the second worst team. If we beat them (a big 'if' in my view) there is still an awful lot more work to do.

[NL Claret]

Referee collared by the Greeks at half time, dodgy pen and red card in the away leg.

Countless attempts at goal in the home leg, one of them nights.

Oh yes, we didn't take it seriously. That one bores me as much as the Joe Hart was the problem.

We could have done without Europe.

[boatshed bill]

Has he taken any responsibility for our poor performances?

[jrgbfc]

What on earth are you on about jrgbfc ?
Good article...for those saying it is just "waffle" or that SD is saying nothing which managers do you think speak more openly and articulately than ours ? There really is some pitiful criticism on this thread. I assume these posters are applying for football manager roles to show SD how simple it is ?

Apart from trotting out the usual cliches not sure the interview tells us anything whatsoever. And yes, to me it seems as though he is absolving himself of any blame whatsoever and pinning it on the players.

[Tall Paul]

Has he taken any responsibility for our poor performances?

Looks like it to me, hence his constant use of "we" and "everyone". The responsibility is collective.

[boatshed bill]

Looks like it to me, hence his constant use of "we" and "everyone". The responsibility is collective.

Probably, to an extent, but did he lose a degree of control or take his eye off things?

[dougcollins]

Picking the appropriate team for the European games may have made SD's job easier. And I doubt we would be where we are now.

I thought that was the first major blip in his (Burnley) management portfolio, though it does look like he's getting us out of it.

[Hipper]

I wonder if he took any advice on how to deal with the Euro campaign, from the likes of Roy Hodgson say. That would seem to be the sensible approach.