Sports
IN the latest episode of the Proper Football podcast, Sean Dyche spoke about his sacking at Burnley, why his “tough” Clarets side was actually much softer than people tend to think and about his special friendship with Elton John.
Dyche spoke to hosts Chris Kamara and Ben Shephard about his career and mind-set in an illuminating conversation this week, including the relationship he formed with Elton John while at Watford.
Here are just a few takeaways from the podcast.
‘If you start taking it personally, you eat yourself alive with it’
With eight games left last season and Burnley facing Premier League relegation, the Lancashire club decided to part ways with their long-time boss.
He managed the Clarets for nine and a half years and was the Premier League’s longest-serving manager. Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp inherited the mantle after Dyche’s dismissal in April.
Within that time, Dyche oversaw two promotions to the Premier League and a commendable seventh-place finish in the top tier in 2017-18.
It’s fair to say that many pundits were shocked by the sacking.
Nevertheless, Dyche told the Proper Football podcast that he didn’t take the decision personally, no matter how hard it was to leave Turf Moor.
“I’ve been in football my whole life,” reflected the 51-year-old. “You do get a few knocks, you get let down a few times, whether it be by managers, staff, fellow players, fans… it happens.
“But if you start taking it personally, you eat yourself alive with it. I try and be objective, look at the bigger picture and go, ‘what was my part in it?’ My part was to get the team to win and we didn’t win enough games.”
‘We had a record number of games without a sending off’
During Dyche’s time with Burnley, the club were commonly perceived as tough and physical on the pitch. However, he disputed this notion on the podcast.
“Look at our record – every year we’d be mid-table in bookings. We had a record of games without a sending off, until Nathan Collins got sent off down at Brentford,” said Dyche.
It’s true. Burnley went a record 120 Premier League matches without a red card, with an average of one dismissal a season and none of those given at Turf Moor.
Dyche’s own disciplinary record as a player was also pretty clean.
“In my career I got sent off twice,” he said. “I was never suspended for bookings. I must have been a brilliant tough man that was like an assassin.”
‘My angel, my darling’
Prior to joining Burnley, Dyche spent a year in charge at Watford, who he had previously captained as a player.
He led them to 11th place in the Championship – their highest finish for four years – but was let go in July 2012, with a record of 17 wins, 17 draws and 15 losses in 49 games.
Dyche told Kamara and Shephard that, during his time with the Hornets, he formed a special relationship with the honorary life president of the club, Sir Elton John.
In fact, Dyche said that the pop superstar even had a nickname for him.
“I met him a few times,” he said. “‘My angel, my darling’ was my tag. It would be ‘here’s my angel, my darling’, and then I’d get a big hug.”
Apparently, John even gave him a shout-out on stage once at one of his concerts.
“Me, Stoney (Steve Stone) and Woany (Ian Woan) took our wives to watch him in Birmingham. Just walking on stage, he said, ‘my angel, my darling, Sean Dyche is here tonight’.”
‘People probably wouldn’t believe that I was a tricky little midfielder’
We know Dyche as a centre-back from his playing days with the likes of Chesterfield, Bristol City, Millwall and Watford.
However, listeners of the podcast may be surprised to learn that he started out his footballing career in a different position.
“People probably wouldn’t believe that I was a tricky little midfielder,” Dyche joked to Kamara and Shephard.
Born in Kettering, he was a youth product of Nottingham Forest in the late 1980s, while Brian Clough was manager of the first team and Archie Gemmill his assistant.
He described how Gemmill decided his footballing fate on the back of a growth spurt.
“I went to Nottingham Forest at 16. I was about five-foot-seven and 10 stone. Within a year, I was six-foot-one and 12 stone. Archie Gemmill was like, ‘you’re playing centre-half. End of’.”
‘They were the most professional, non-professionals I’d ever seen’
After finishing his playing career with Northampton Town, Dyche worked hard to achieve his football coaching badges.
However, he said while most of his contemporaries “would do things like go to Ajax and watch passing drills”, he took a different route.
Instead, Dyche studied the Oxford boat crew, which he said he did in order to learn about their elite mind-set.
“They were the most professional, non-professionals I’d ever seen,” Dyche said.
Among the team at the time were the Winklevoss brothers, whom readers may remember from the film, The Social Network. They sued Mark Zuckerberg in 2004, claiming he stole their ideas to create Facebook.
Culled from BBC SPORT
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Tags: Ben Shephard Chris Kamara Elton John Sean Dyche
