How Sean Dyche really feels about current Burnley FC situation | OneFootball

Former Burnley manager Sean Dyche has given his verdict on how the Clarets will fare back in the Championship.

Burnley are preparing for life back in the Championship following their relegation from the Premier League.

It was another disappointing campaign in the Premier League for Burnley last season as they were relegated with a total of just 22 points, bringing their spell in the top flight to an end after only one year.

The Clarets parted company with head coach Scott Parker with four games of the season remaining after their relegation was confirmed, but almost two months on from his exit, they are still yet to appoint his permanent replacement.

It seemed that Burnley were closing in on the appointment of Wales manager Craig Bellamy, who previously served as Vincent Kompany's assistant at Turf Moor, but his proposed move to Lancashire collapsed last week due to issues over backroom staff.

The Clarets then turned their attention to former Wolves manager Rob Edwards, but the 43-year-old is believed to have rejected their approach having only left his role at Molineux earlier this month.

A number of other names have been linked with Burnley during their managerial hunt, including Brian Barry-Murphy, John Eustace and Steve Cooper, with recently-departed Scotland boss Steve Clarke emerging as the latest name in the frame this week, but with the start of pre-season looming, it appears owner Alan Pace is back to square one.

Sean Dyche issues Burnley verdict ahead of Championship return

Action Images

As the new Championship season draws closer, former Burnley manager Sean Dyche has given his verdict on events at Turf Moor.

Dyche spent nine-and-a-half years in charge of the Clarets prior to his sacking in April 2022, guiding the club to promotion from the Championship on two occasions, as well as leading them to a seventh-placed finish in the Premier League and qualification for Europe in the 2017-18 season.

After their third relegation from the top flight in the last five years, Dyche admitted he is unsure how Burnley will fare in the second tier next season, and he questioned whether they may need to change their transfer model in order to achieve long-term success.

When asked what he expects of the Clarets in the upcoming campaign, Dyche told talkSPORT: "I don’t know.

"Their model hasn’t worked, has it? Actually, that’s wrong because the model worked to get them up. But they spent a fortune and came straight back down.

"Then I assume they thought they were going to sell everyone for £100m, but they didn’t, but then they went back up again after Scotty Parker did a brilliant job — an amazing job actually — and then they went down again.

"So it sort of has worked and it sort of hasn’t worked, but I don’t know. I don’t know which way they go with it now.

"Do they do that again? Do they re-invest quite heavily in the Championship to get them back up? Do they invest again in the Premier League, should they get there, on youngsters like they have done? But then they might go back down again, so I don’t know."

“We just planned to stay up," Dyche continued.

"After we qualified for Europe, the board said: ‘just keep us in the Premier League’. That was it and that’s amazing for a manager, that’s brilliant clarity. Not going: ‘Oh, we finished 7th so we should be thinking 5th’.

"They knew I had the drive, they knew I wasn’t just happy with staying up, I had the natural drive. They didn’t need to tell me to be driven or stimulated to do better. They knew naturally they had a manager and staff who were pushing to do well and that was an amazing thing for me as a manager.

"As much as they didn’t have a load of money, or they did, they just didn’t give it to me as the manager, they were brilliant at staying true to the truth of the club.

"The board backed me with a lot of stuff, by the way, but the best bit about it was not changing the goalposts all the time. Keep us in the Premier League, that was the challenge.

"It didn’t matter how we did it, keep us in the Premier League."

Alan Pace facing fresh Burnley pressure after Craig Bellamy, Rob Edwards developments

Action Image

Burnley have won automatic promotion in each of their last four seasons in the Championship, but there are big question marks over whether they will be able to replicate that success this time around.

It should be remembered that the Clarets did not appoint Parker until the start of July prior to their previous promotion-winning campaign, so lengthy managerial searches are nothing new at Turf Moor, but having been rejected by Bellamy and Edwards, it does not seem as though Pace has a clear back-up plan.

Pace regularly came under fire last season during another underwhelming Premier League campaign in which Burnley never truly looked like staying up, and the pressure on the American will only increase if he gets the next appointment wrong.