SEAN DYCHE has ordered his Burnley stars to stay mentally locked in during the lockdown in preparation for a Premier League return.
The Clarets boss wants his squad to remain focused, despite no official date for when top flight matches will resume.
He said: “We’ve told players to make sure mentally you’re staying locked in, make sure your prime thought, other than health, is that we’re going to come back.
“We want them to stay engaged with it because when it comes around the likelihood is there will only be a short ‘pre-season’ to get ready and we want to be mentally ready.
“It might be a different season, behind closed-doors and stuff but it will still be a real season. It means a lot so therefore we have to be ready to take it on.”
Prem clubs have pencilled in early June for a return and Dyche revealed Burnley are starting to increase the intensity of their remote training sessions.
Speaking on Sky’s Football Show, he said: “We are ramping that up slightly.
“We have added GPS units and are just monitoring them more closely.
“We had a bit of foresight when this first started.
“We thought it would go on longer so we actually gave the players a 10-14 day breakdown period where we said just make sure everyone’s well, look after your families and don’t worry about anything, take a load off. Then we have started to build up from there.”
Dyche added: “We’ve taken a longer view and so far that’s worked.
“But we haven’t had any intelligence of actually when it will get back to normal.
“When we get that we will have some guidelines of what we will be able to do and we will work within that.”
