DYCHE’S COOL HEAD AS PRAISE POURS IN
IMPROVEMENT on last year remains Burnley’s aim — despite their stunning start to the Premier League season. With Christmas looming, Sean Dyche’s bookiebashing Clarets find themselves in a barely believable joint-fourth place, sparking talk in the tiny Lancashire town of an unlikely assault on Europe. However, the club’s down-to-earth manager is refusing to get carried away and will instead be looking to better last term’s 16th-placed finish. ‘The targets stay the same,’ said Dyche ahead of tomorrow’s trip to Brighton and Hove Albion. ‘My first target is to achieve something better than last season. The main thing is to progress. Can you beat last year’s total? It shows signs you are developing, improving. Year-onyear progress is a good sign for a club like this.’ Burnley, who picked up 40 points last term, are already on 31 points this time around. And Dyche admitted it has surprised him. ‘I’m a realist,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think we could get to where we’ve got to this early. I thought we were in better shape than last season but I’d be lying if I said I thought we’d be here this early on. I’m surprised because you’re playing so many good teams. Some of the performances have been very good. There are no gimmes in the Premier League — it owes you nothing.’ Dyche insisted that his high flyers would not get carried away and denied that his players had a newfound swagger about their game. ‘I don’t know about a swagger,’ he said. ‘There’s slightly more assuredness. I don’t think we’re at a position where we go to places and swagger. It can be a fragile business, football.’ Following Tuesday night’s 1-0 victory over Stoke City, which lifted the Clarets into the continental equation, Dyche declared that he was the ‘proudest man in Proudsville’. ‘I didn’t intend on that making news!’ he said. ‘It was a funny answer to a funny question. Joking apart, I am proud of what the players are achieving. We keep going, we keep getting results…it’s to be enjoyed without a shadow of a doubt.’