Dyche insists Burnley will not get caught in summer spending spree
Sean Dyche insists he and Burnley will resist the temptation of being swept up in the Premier League spending scrap this summer and that the club will “not be thrown under the bus” when it comes to transfers. Burnley have assured their top-flight status for another season and Dyche admitted a club with their resources have to take a different approach to others looking for reinforcements.
“We’ve never been market leaders financially,” he said. “We have money but it has to be managed wisely. If I was at another club and I didn’t have that challenge, I’d manage whatever I had. If someone said, ‘here’s £200 million – we want you to go for your life’ then I would because that’s what I’ve been told to manage.
“The key thing for me is being pragmatic about it and working with the club and I think that’s a better way of managing personally, but it is tough.”
Dyche feels it is not only the bigger clubs who have the power to blow Burnley out of the water in terms of wages and transfer fees and made the comparison with Bournemouth, to whom they lost on the south coast on Saturday, and their superior financial might.
“When you’re talking about the Premier League and half the Championship, the reality is you’ve got people who own the clubs who have hundreds and hundreds of millions. We haven’t.
“It’s not just the TV money – they’ll support it beyond the TV money. This club itself [Bournemouth] have got a backer who has supported them hugely – right from its days in the Championship – a massive, massive amount of money that they’ve generated from his resource. We just haven’t got that. Even if we did have, I’m not sure the club believe in that. The board want to run it as a business concern as well as have a football club and have it in good shape.”
Eddie Howe’s focus is as much on player retention as it is reinforcement and Josh King, who scored his 16th league goal of the season in the defeat of Burnley, is likely to attract admirers. “I’d like to think we can keep all our players this summer. I think that’s one of my biggest challenges. We can achieve great things if we stick together,” he said.