Dyche claims no approaches from Everton

The Daily Mail today is reporting an interesting comment from Burnley’s impressive manager Sean Dyche regarding vacancies earlier in the season at Everton and Crystal Palace.

Dyche has guided the Clarets up to sixth-place in the Premier League table, and was asked if he had been approached by either the Blues or the Eagles this season, and his answer will surprise many Toffees who were under the impression that Everton had reached out to him and had been turned down.

“No. I've been linked with this job or that job for three of the five years I've been here and the truth is that I enjoy the challenge here.”

For long periods of time after Ronald Koeman had been sacked in October it had appeared that the Blues were making a strong go at Dyche, whose defensive style has wowed critics and fans alike as Burnley have proved to be a tough nut indeed to crack.

It was also widely believed that the Blues then tried to prise away Marco Silva from Watford, also unsuccessfully, before ending up getting Sam Allardyce to take the job on an eighteen-month deal.

His recent success has led to links with the England jobs, as well as his name being mentioned any time a top six club is in distress.

“I'm only 46. It's a really good challenge here and there are more challenges for us to work towards.

“There's always this thing in football where you hear: ‘Oh, he's been there too long.’ Sorry, what? How does that work? I'm in a very healthy point of my career, where I haven't got every answer - you never do in football and I certainly don't - but I'm learning all the time, my staff are learning all the time, the players are learning all the time and it's a really healthy environment to be in.

“Football is a very tough business. You can't say: ‘I'm at A and I'm going to go to Z and I'm going to go straight through the alphabet to get there’, football just doesn't work like that.”

If Dyche can maintain that level of performance with Burnley, no doubt he will continue to remain in the picture as the Blues will look to get a long-term manager in place at the end of the 2018-19 season when Allardyce’s term ends.