Boyd ends Burnley stutters as Dyche praises ‘fantastic’ home form

goal was the perfect illustration of the home form which has delivered 32 of their 35 points. The visitors perhaps merited more but spurned several opportunities before Sean Dyche’s team once again confounded their opponents at Turf Moor.

“Our performances at home have been fantastic,” Dyche said. “If you’re a Burnley fan and you’ve bought your season ticket, you’re certainly getting enough for your money at home and now it’s about developing the side to continue doing what we’re doing at home and taking it on the road.”

When Burnley defeated Leicester at the end of January, moving up to ninth in the division with a 10-point cushion from the relegation zone, it was difficult to imagine a fraught conclusion to this campaign. Since then however, their progress has been arduous. Collecting just three points from the 21 available prior to last night, pointed towards a team crawling towards survival.

“We’ve had better performances but I thought it was a good performance considering we’d had an awkward run and to come off that we knew it was an important game and an important three points,” Dyche said.

“We’ve just played five out of seven away and the two teams at home were the top two in the division. We delivered a performance that could get the three points. You want to keep moving forward and keep developing the side and the club. We’ve got a record number of points albeit only [from] three seasons in the Premier League but with seven games to go. That has to show that the team has improved, it has to. We know how tough the Premier League is now it has to be about taking on the rest of the challenge.”

While Stoke have overcome the challenge of establishing themselves, quite where Mark Hughes can now take his squad is another question. His proficiency in transforming their style and turning the club into perennial top-half finishers is to be admired, yet it was plain to see the failings, particularly in front of goal, that may prevent them going beyond midtable respectability.

“Certainly we had chances in the first half and should have converted at least one of them,” Hughes said. “I do feel that if we had scored the opening goal we’d have won comfortably.”

He added: “The performance was good, we just needed a little bit of quality, a little bit of guile and the ability to pick the right pass at the right time at the top end of the pitch and unfortunately that was the only thing lacking.”