Sean Dyche 'relaxed' despite Burnley being bottom of the Premier League after defeat to Everton

Everton 1 Burnley 0: Clarets fumed at referee Mike Jones after he awarded Everton a penalty and sent off Barnes, only to let Mirallas off after a shocking tackle

Ashley Barnes of Burnley (right) appeals to referee Michael Jones (GETTY IMAGES)

For the past two, long months Burnley have been looking forward to this Saturday with anticipation.

For the first time since they drew 2-2 with West Bromwich Albion on 8 February, Sean Dyche’s side will be facing a team they might be expected to beat, a side that has been below them for most of this Premier League season.

The opponent and the venue have not changed. It is still Leicester at Turf Moor but the mood in this corner of Lancashire has altered entirely. They will now be facing a Leicester side who have won their last three games, are no longer bottom and have managed a dozen goals in their last seven matches. Over the same period, Burnley have one.

For a man who knows that his fate could be decided within a week, Dyche looked relaxed as he stood in the spring sunshine by the now empty stands at Goodison Park on Saturday. Everton had scored one. Burnley, naturally, had scored nothing at all.

“We have to keep believing,” said the Burnley manager. “Very rarely in the Premier League do you see a game with 15 or 20 chances. We can bank on getting two, as we did here, but we have to take them. It is all about learning to win and that is something we have been trying to do all season.

“We are relaxed and we are focused. There is more to come from us, I am sure of that, but we have to deliver it fast because now there are just five games left.”

None, compared with what Burnley have been through since February, seems especially taxing. There will be no opponents from Manchester, Merseyside or north London.

It seems strange that a manager bottom of the Premier League in mid-April would use a word like “relaxed”. However, Burnley are still in the equation. When Everton beat them 3-1 at Turf Moor, they had still to win a match. The date was 26 October and they would lose again the following weekend.

And yet Dyche’s problems in these remaining games could be summed up when, after a largely fruitless hour at Goodison during which Ashley Barnes had been dismissed for a foolish second yellow card, he replaced Sam Vokes with Lukas Jutkiewicz. Both are strikers but neither has a Premier League goal to his name this season.

If Danny Ings, who has not found the net in two months, is serious about playing for one of football’s great powers, now would be a good time to prove his ability.

“From the outside looking in, a lot of people are surprised we are even in a position to save ourselves,” said Dyche. “But I have always been confident because of the way we play, always using two up front, that we would get a chance at the business end of the season.

“Even when we had not won any of the first 10 games, I still had a belief that this club could do it. This is our chance but now we have to take it.”