The greatest trick that Sean Dyche ever pulled was making you assume that he was a managerial stalwart: the dynasty at one club, the grumpy deflection of criticism, the delight in bruising the noses of the great and the good.
Ask someone to guess the two Premier League managers who are next in line when ranked by age, and if they get Brendan Rodgers and Thomas Tuchel then fair play to them. Dyche is younger than Jurgen Klopp and Pep Guardiola and the same age as Mauricio Pochettino.
This is where Dyche’s preferred style – distinctly old school, forthright, no nonsense – warps the mind until the perception overshadows the reality. He is irrevocably linked (whether he likes it or not) to the British manager Dad’s army – Sam Allardyce, Neil Warnock, Tony Pulis – all of whom are aged 64 or older. There is really nothing more to say about Dyche’s persona than this: he was once asked in a press conference to confirm or deny that he ate worms.
Dyche never liked the accusation that Burnley were a long ball team. He interpreted it as a slur rather than a descriptor (and his rough translation probably had some merit). But the tag stuck for a reason and it wasn’t just because people made those conclusions offhand. Burnley didn’t adapt to the Premier League; they coerced the Premier League into adapting to them. When they finished seventh they ranked first for long balls and last for attempted dribbles. When they finished 17th last season they ranked first for long balls and last for attempted dribbles.
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Burnley’s goalscoring has always been consistent too: between 33 and 46 in each of their Premier League seasons since promotion, including a scarcely believable 36 when they finished seventh. What has changed over the last 18 months is their diminishing ability to protect their own goal – less able to stop shots, less able to prevent high-quality chances, less able to block the shots they did allow.
So if there was one broad shift in Burnley’s Dychian existence, it was not an evolution of their style but their leader’s attitude to those who criticised it. In 2015, Dyche refuted accusations: “We are not a long ball side”. But by 2018, a significant shift: “My personal view is to play effective football in any game. If that means making sure the ball goes on top of their centre halves then that’s what we’ll do.”
Dyche never quite stopped caring what people thought (that, surely is a truth of human nature) but instead learned to lean on his own distinctiveness. The magic of Burnley’s success lay not in their continued survival against the odds, although that was the end result, but in their deliberate strategy to be an exception and an antidote. In a league that can tend towards homogeneity, where everyone wants to press and everyone wants to pass and what defines your ability to do so more or less successfully is your financial might, Burnley were proudly different.
And – this does appear to have been slightly overlooked over the last week – it worked until the investment from the club’s hierarchy stopped. Burnley have always had one of the four lowest wage bills in the Premier League since their promotion – Dyche turned water into sweet home brew. But between 2016-17 and 2019-20, Burnley had a net spend of £59m on transfer fees; the Premier League’s Just About Managings. Since then, a net spend of £4m. The ALK takeover loaded the club with debt and its success surely depends upon survival. Survival depends upon investment.
Was that ever deliberately designed to be a reflection of its geography, the working-class, industrial mill town stereotype that is prolonged by the view from the Jimmy Hargreaves Upper – who knows? More likely is that this sort of thing happens organically, the construction of your own arcadia through a thousand decisions. What is certain is that this manager and this club found a oneness in each other’s arms until they became fused together as one mass – who knew where Burnley stopped and Sean Dyche began.
Where that leaves Dyche is a complicated question. He is both (still!) the favourite to be the next England manager and a reasonable next fit at Watford (where he has managed previously) and West Brom (where it feels like he must have managed already). Aside from that, an absence of certainty. In which division will Dyche even manage next?
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That plays back into the notion of identity. We are told that every sensible modern club seeks its own ethos, a persisting, permeating ethos that exists beyond individuals and into the foundations of the stadium and training ground. But the Dyche example suggests something different; there is surely nobody more capable of creating a distinct identity. It’s not the presence of the identity that matters, but the PR of that identity and Dyche, unfairly or otherwise, is not viewed as the poster boy of bright futures.
If that’s where Dyche falls down, it will be a shame to lose him. For half a decade, he has not just been a Premier League staple but one of its pillars, if only as a control experiment for the thrills and ills of every club owner who pursues a pipe dream of foreign-inspired, aesthetic, bums-on-seats brilliance. Going cheap to a good home: the most overachieving English manager of his generation; 50 years old; one long-term careful owner (until recently). Who knows when the phone will actually ring or who the caller will be.
Daniel Farke emerges as surprise candidate to replace Dyche at Turf Moor
By Mark Douglas
Daniel Farke could be part of the conversation as Burnley look to find a solution to the managerial dilemma posed by Sean Dyche’s surprise sacking on Friday.
The Clarets’ decision to part ways with Dyche was driven by the need to shock their season back into life after a devastating defeat against Norwich, while also recruiting someone who is closer in line with the club’s vision under owners ALK Capital.
A creditable draw at West Ham on Sunday kept the relegation race alive, with Everton facing Leicester at home and then a Merseyside derby against Liverpool this week.
Sources close to Farke, who left Russian side FC Krasnodor last month after the invasion of Ukraine, told i that he was looking to the summer before deciding his future.
They are playing their cards close to their chest on the Burnley role although he enjoyed his time in England and has a track record of working well in a model in which he doesn’t have the ultimate say on recruitment.
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