Hard side of football is mum crying because I’m being called a c***, says Dyche
DAVE KITSON and Sean Dyche first crossed each other’s paths nearly 20 years ago and have more in common than their hair colour.
Kitson once finished eighth in the top flight with Reading only for the club to be relegated the following year.
In a wide-ranging chat, boss Dyche tells how he stopped the rot at Burnley when they seemed to be heading the same way and why managing in the Champions League isn’t the be-all and end-all.
DAN KING listened in.
SEAN DYCHE: How are you, big man? It’s been a while. I remember when you came down and trained at Millwall. It’s hard to come on trial and when players do well, you notice it. We thought: ‘He’ll sign here.’ But you didn’t and went to Cambridge instead.
DAVE KITSON: Cambridge had rejected me then a year later they ended up buying me. Anyone can make mistakes.
DAN KING: Please don’t think I’m taking the mickey, both of you. But I asked Dave whether he was teased for being ginger as a kid and whether it affected him, but he said he was big and stroppy so it was fine. Sean, you have played along with the Ginger Mourinho, Ginger Guardiola stuff . . .
DYCHE: Let’s make this clear: I certainly have NOT played along with it . . .
KING: But did having ginger hair shape you or your career in any way?
DYCHE: I had good parents. Two older brothers, bit of a handful between us, all got ginger hair, a bit fiery. I remember a very happy childhood. I still see my friends from five-years-old. We still have a curry and tell the same stories we’ve been telling the last 37 years.
The game shapes you. I played for 20 years at all levels, apart from the Premier League. I had a disaster at Bristol City, where in two years I learnt more about myself, the industry, fans, how you get treated, than I ever learnt in my career.
I went there for a decent fee at the time, injury straight away. Got back fit but the face didn’t fit, like you felt at Stoke, Dave.
Fans booing you off. ‘We want Dyche out.’
That’s the hard side of football no one sees — your mum crying her eyes out because her son’s being called an absolute c**t by 20,000 people. It was the first time that had happened.
They are very personal moments, they shape you.
KITSON: I had that. This fella at Reading in the players’ lounge, after the only game where I hadn’t played very well, he’s: ‘f*****g Kitson, you f*****g c**t’.
My mum is standing there crying her eyes out.
The same guy steps in front of my mum and says: ‘Dave, sign that for us, will you?’ My mum only told me the whole story afterwards.
DYCHE: That’s the reality, warts and all. This is what you wanted to do. It’s not all glory. All that moulded me. So when the heat comes on me now, I don’t feel it.
KITSON: There was plenty of heat for you this season.
I saw it at Reading. We had a great first season in the Premier League, but the next year — same group of lads, same everything, really — it goes completely the other way. Once it slides, you rarely see it come back.
Finishing seventh was a big feather in your cap but I think this year is a bigger achievement.
DYCHE: It sounds mad. People say: ‘You finished seventh last season.’ But when the team is rolling, confidence is high, people are playing towards the top of their levels, the team connection is there, the hunger is there, the whole thing was kind of looking after itself.
The difference this season has been, this needs change.
From a purely management point of view, to get that to turn round is really pleasing for me. I call it new manager thinking.
I said: ‘I’m a new manager, I’ve just walked in the building — what are you all thinking? Give it to me, let me compute it and we’ll change what we think we need to change.’
We had a meeting with the players and got feedback. And I mean feedback, not casting aspersions, not ‘you should be doing this, doing that’.
The team needed a twist. What would a new manager do? Highly unlikely he plays the same side. We changed the training, changed the feel and it had a real effect.
KITSON: Did you ever think the board might literally go for new manager thinking?
DYCHE: My first six months here I was getting booed off as much as I was getting cheered off and the board never questioned what I was doing. They’ve always been really good.
And without blowing smoke up my own a**e, there’s a lot to believe in. If you look at the 6½ years, where it is now and where it was then, they shouldn’t quickly be asking too many questions.
KITSON: Do you get enough credit?
DYCHE: There are so many opinions now. You can drive yourself mad thinking about it, so why bother?
I know what I do, I know how we work, I know our intentions and I know the welfare of this club. I am employed by a club, a whole company. It’s not a company being run as a means for me to go off and say: ‘Ta-dah!’
KITSON: Does that ‘ta-dah’ mean you see yourself going up?
DYCHE: Like anyone, you want to work at the highest level you can. This season’s challenge has been: This has not worked, can you turn this ship around and get it to work again? And if that was really easy, how come teams get relegated?
The next version of that is: Where CAN this go to? This is the kind of club where you’re never quite sure.
We finished seventh last year. Can it go there every year? No, I don’t think so. But can it go there? We’ve shown that.
Can it do better than this season? Yes it can. Is that a guarantee? No, it’s not.
This club is very business-minded, it makes healthy profits. How far can you stretch it that doesn’t break it but allows us the chance to breathe?
KITSON: So do you want to be a Champions League manager?
DYCHE: True success for me is allowing players to be better than I was. That is what I went into coaching for and I’ve not lost sight of that.
If I never work in the Champions League, but I could have 50 players come up to me and say, ‘By the way, I haven’t forgotten what you helped us do’, that’s a strength in itself.
That’s an inner, personal strength — not an out-there strength, ‘Look at me I’ve managed in the Champions League’. I can very simply look myself in the mirror and say I’m doing my bit.
If that, at some point, leads to working at the ‘top’ as other people look at it, like the Champions League, you’ve probably earned your spurs.
KITSON: It’s been quite a week in the Champions League.
DYCHE: I was a Liverpool fan as a kid. Me and Woany (assistant manager Ian Woan) managed to get back from watching the Under-23s to see the last 35 minutes of the game against Barcelona.
The scene at the end, the team in front of the Kop singing. They’re magic moments.
KITSON: The Burnley fans have called you the Ginger Mourinho and the Ginger Guardiola, but do you have more of an affinity with Jurgen Klopp, in the way you and he seem to embody what your clubs stand for?
DYCHE: He more or less always plays a 4-3-3, while I’m accused of always playing a 4-4-2. Liverpool run and they work and there’s the endeavour and there’s the spirit and there’s a glue that holds them together. In that sense, we’re not a million miles away, not that different. They just happen to have a lot more individual specialist players.
But in terms of being a symbol or whatever, I’ve just promoted what is here. People have not had an easy ride in Burnley. They have to fight for and earn everything they get.
They have been kicked a number of times — industry breaks down, life breaks down, club nearly out of business in ’87.
So, at least put out a team that’s going to try. It might not be as amazing as anyone else, but these lads have an unbelievable go.
A lot of people have been involved. Where we are now used to be the little old bungalow where Arthur Bellamy, a former player and assistant manager used to live.
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Look at this now, done out as a media suite. Look at the new training ground. Lots of people have been involved in putting all this in place.
If it had gone wrong for me at Christmas, I’d have shook hands and gone ‘Thanks, it’s been amazing.’
It didn’t go wrong, and it’s still ‘Thanks, it’s been amazing.’ Not many managers get to be in that position.