Recognise Dyche achievements

Antonio Conte at Leicester and Chelsea respectively.

Past winners include Frank Clark for taking Nottingham Forest to third in 1995, Dave Jones for a 12th-place finish with Southampton in 1998 and Steve Coppell for Reading coming eighth in 2007. Stripped of context, a decade or two on, those examples seem mediocre, inconsequential or unworthy of acknowledgement.

But in each case, Clark, Jones and Coppell’s fellow managers were tipping their cap to what good management is – exceeding beyond the limits of one’s resources, achieving beyond expectation. And if there is one manager who has done that more than any other this year, is Sean Dyche.

Despite decent cases from each of this year’s promoted it managers, the Burnley manager is Guardiola’s only real competition for either managerial award and it is not difficult to see why.

In the opening months of the season, Dyche (inset below) had to contend with the loss of Michael Keane to Everton and captain Tom Heaton to a dislocated shoulder, but astute planning meant James Tarkowski was a ready-made Keane stand-in.

Heaton was replaced by a topflight novice in Nick Pope who nonetheless ran David de Gea close to be named this season’s best goalkeeper. Ashley Barnes has repaid Dyche’s faith in him, while Jack Cork has proved one of the signings of last summer.

But to pick out individuals would be to diminish Burnley’s greatest strength – their organisation as a unit.

The precise, pincer-esque way Dyche’s banks of four move around the pitch is the chief reason why a side roundly tipped for relegation instead find themselves in seventh-place, two points behind Arsenal, with a better-than-decent chance of qualifying for Europe. A place in the top six is not beyond the realms of possibility either.

In a league where wage budgets often dictate a club’s success, Burnley’s stands at £55m, the third-lowest in the league and more than four times smaller than City’s. Their season is the very definition of achieving beyond expectation.

Guardiola may take one of the managerial awards, but he should not be surprised if he does not claim a clean sweep. (© Independent News Service) IRELAND will play two intra-squad warmup games later this month ahead of their historic inaugural Test match against Pakistan on May 11.

Head coach Graham Ford has selected 26 players, including Ed Joyce, Kevin O’Brien, Niall O’Brien and William Porterfield, to play a pair of two-day contests at Merrion and Pembroke Cricket Clubs.

Meanwhile, the audio rights to England’s tours of Sri Lanka and the West Indies have been won by commercial broadcaster talkSPORT.

It is the first time since 2005 the BBC’s Test Match Special has lost the rights to an England overseas tour.

The free-to-air rights cover the Tests, ODIs and T20s for the tours which start in Sri Lanka in October and the West Indies in early 2019.