Burnley really are in trouble this season

Burnley boss Sean Dyche is one of my favourite Premier League bosses. He comes across as an honest bloke, who you could go for a pint with on a Saturday night. The Clarets chief does not seem to complicate things that do not need to be complicated. His managerial style has proven to be a solid success first at Chesterfield and more recently at Burnley.

Dyche managed to build a Clarets team that have become a mainstay of the Premier League. However, this season has been a terrible one for the team from Lancashire.

Defensive foundations have fallen apart

Dyche has built his relative success at Burnley on his team being well organised and solid in defence. The Clarets defensive solidity was the foundations for Burnley maintaining their top-flight status in recent campaigns.

This season their defensive solidity has disappeared and they are conceding far too many goals. In fact, only bottom club Fulham have conceded more than the 32 goals conceded by the 19^th place Clarets.

It is an incredible turnaround for such a solid team and Dyche at the helm. The team needs to get back to basics when defending otherwise they will continue to concede at an alarming rate.

Do not score enough goals

Burnley have never been that prolific in their time in the Premier League, as they have not had to be because of their very solid backline. The Clarets did not need to score two, three or four goals a game to get a result, because that solid backline won them so many points.

However, this season they need to score more goals, as the team from Lancashire are the fourth lowest scoring team in the top-flight this season, having scored just 14 times this season in 15 league games.

The likes of Sam Vokes, Ashley Barnes and Chris Wood are much of a muchness, as they are decent strikers, who will cause opposition defences problems. They will also nick a goal on occasion.

However, none of the trio will ever be prolific in the Premier League. It does not help that although Dyche has tried to bring in players with creativity, there seems to be a dearth of it in the Clarets team in the games I have seen this season.

The Clarets have a dangerous mix of conceding too many goals and not scoring enough. Those two things mixed together spell relegation, which would be a shame for Burnley, as they are a proper community football club.

Favourites for relegation

Burnley’s poor start to the season now has the Clarets 2/5 favourites to suffer relegation this season. It is a far cry from last season when they finished seventh place in the Premier League.

It is not currently looking good for the Clarets, but there is plenty of time for Sean Dyche’s team to turn things around. I just hope that the loyalty between Dyche and the club remains, as the pair have enjoyed a good relationship.

At a lot other Premier League clubs, Dyche probably would have been sacked by now. However, he has done an excellent job establishing the Clarets as a regular fixture in the English top-flight, which is no mean feat considering his relatively small budget. He deserves some time to attempt to turn things around.

I really hope that Burnley escapes the relegation zone, as I like Dyche and it is good to see that rarity, an Englishman managing a Premier League club. He is also not the typical Premier League boss, so he would be a loss to the English top-flight.

Can Sean Dyche turn things around at Burnley?