'We have to face forfeits for our transgressions' - George Boyd on the secrets behind Burnley's success

From the feared 'wheel of fortune' to manager Sean Dyche's tough-love approach, the Burnley midfielder explains to The Independent why the Clarets continue to impress this season

Burnley have developed a fearsome home reputation this season which Boyd puts down to a number of factors (Getty)

Turf Moor awaits Premier League leaders Chelsea on Sunday lunchtime, and George Boyd smiles as he describes what lies in store for the latest visitors to an old-fashioned Pennine football outpost that has become one of the top flight’s most daunting destinations.

“The crowd are right on top of you and obviously the changing room’s not what they are used to,” says the affable Burnley midfielder. “It is quite small and dingy. I remember coming here with Peterborough and Hull, and it’s a small dressing room and it’s cold and horrible.

“They just don’t like it and our home form is brilliant,” he adds. “We press teams. They’re not used to people in their faces at this level. A few of the boys have [been told by opponents], ‘Oh, you can’t play this way every week’ – as a bit of a negative comment to us – but it shows it has got in their heads. They don’t like coming here and they see it as like Championship football.”

In truth, it is very much Premier League football that Burnley have been playing – at least at home – this term. If winless on the road, Sean Dyche’s men have gained more home points (28 from 13 matches) than every team bar Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur, and are on course to earn their first back-to-back seasons in the top flight since the early 70s.

Boyd, sitting in claret top and navy shorts in the media building at their training ground, is clear about the reasons for their success. At the heart of it, he explains, is the drive and togetherness instilled by their admirable manager Dyche. “If you don’t work hard, you’ll be out of the door,” he says. “We train how we play. It comes across in how we play. We do that every single day. It’s a great team spirit here.”

It has enabled Dyche to successfully integrate a sometimes wayward talent like Joey Barton – “if a massive ego came into this dressing room he just wouldn’t get away with acting bad in this environment” – and it is a spirit upheld, Boyd says, by a series of punishments including a dip in a freezing river for anyone who steps out of line.

He reveals more as he explains the squad’s Friday routine of a wheel of fortune (“spin”) session, where any player who transgresses during the week faces a forfeit. “There is a wheel of fortune with all different dares around it,” Boyd explains. The most difficult one involves plunging into the River Calder which dissects the training ground. “You have to lie in the freezing water out there for a minute! That’s one of the new ones. There’s an After Eight challenge where with no hands you have to try to get it in your mouth. Or you have to dress up as Elvis and sing along in front of everyone. We do that every Friday before a game and it brings out the spirit.

Boyd bids to dispossess Arsenal's Aaron Ramsey (Getty)

“I could leave a cup out at lunch and if someone catches you, they take a picture and send it in and it comes up on the screen on Friday. You’re always on edge if you’ve done something.”

Always on edge: it’s not a bad way for a Premier League footballer to be, and this leads us to Burnley’s relentless on-field approach. “You’ve got Chelsea and [Antonio] Conte and Liverpool and this high-pressing game. The gaffer did that years ago,” says Boyd, who believes that “because we’re little old Burnley he [Dyche] doesn’t seem to be getting the praise that he deserves.”

It was Dyche himself, speaking in August, who suggested that Conte’s preferred hard-running sessions, if introduced by an English manager like himself, would have prompted more cries of “dinosaur” than “genius”. Boyd regards his manager as considerably closer to the latter, and acknowledges this could, eventually, lead to interest from elsewhere. “He’s got to be one of the top three British managers, for sure,” he says. “I think he will definitely go higher but he has built something special here.”

And could higher mean England? “You’ve got Eddie Howe. He plays a nice footballing game so maybe he’s more suited to being England manager.” These last two words come accompanied by air quotes from Boyd, a Scotland international.

Burnley’s players face the threat of a dip in the River Calder if they step out of line. Work is being completed on club’s new training centre on the right (Simon Hart)

Dyche, by contrast, “plays winning football which is what everyone wants. The gaffer calls it ‘mixed football’. We’re a good footballing team but we can also go direct with the players we’ve got. It’s great to have that different weapon because if the passing game is not working we can go direct, get second balls, and we’ve scored a lot of goals that way this season.

“The last time [in the Premier League] we didn’t really have the squad and we were 4-4-2 mainly but this year we’ve got three in midfield which turns into a five. Tactically he has become more aware this time of who we are playing. Last time it was 4-4-2 and everyone knew what we were doing.”

Turf Moor’s good times – in numbers:

9 – Burnley have already won more games (nine) than in each of their two previous Premier League campaigns of 2009/10 and 2014/15.

8 – They are eight points better off than at this stage two years ago

7 – They face Chelsea on a run of seven straight home wins in all competitions

Burnley’s evolution is noteworthy. The club’s new £10.6m Barnfield Training Centre will open next month. On the pitch their improved squad has been strengthened further by last month’s deadline-day signings of midfielders Robbie Brady – for a club-record fee – and Ashley Westwood. “We’ve obviously got a much better squad than last time,” says Boyd, “and we’ve had that experience of the Premier League last time so you come in more experienced and there’s the confidence this time of winning football matches. People believe they actually belong at this level now so that’s why we’re doing so well.”

Boyd, now 31, certainly belongs. He was 27 when he made his Premier League debut as a Hull City substitute at Chelsea in August 2013. Ten years earlier he had been working “five or six hours a week” in a platform sweet shop at Hitchin railway station while studying and playing for Stevenage reserves. The money earned allowed him “to get my train back to Kent” to visit family.

Turf Moor is a hostile ground for any visiting Premier League side (Getty)

For a player who has sampled every division from the Conference upwards, it took time to gain that belief he belonged among the elite. “I remember chopping Ashley Cole,” he recalls of his top-flight bow. “Usually at the lower levels, I’d get away from him but he was straight back there and that’s when I thought, ‘This is the top level and this is the players we’ll be playing against each week’.”

As it was, his first Premier League season as a Burnley player in 2014/15 ended with him ranked as the player with most sprints in the entire division – and second only to team-mate Scott Arfield for most distance covered. He has been branded Burnley’s running man ever since. “I did it at Peterborough but in the Premier League everything is magnified. I am used to it. It’s just part of my game. I used to be known as a flair player but now I’m the running man. I might do a marathon when I’ve finished!”

When Burnley faced Manchester City on 2 January he outran each of Pep Guardiola’s players, covering 7.8 miles. He averages, he reckons, “13km” per match. He is not alone. “Opponents think you can’t play this way for the whole game but with our fitness levels we’re scoring a lot of late goals at the minute. I feel in the last 20, 25 minutes we are running all over teams.”

Boyd celebrates after scoring against Bournemouth (Getty)

Not surprisingly, he struggles to fathom why so many managers see the need to rest half their team, or more, for FA Cup games. He, for one, will not be seeking a break when Burnley host non-league Lincoln City next weekend. “I don’t really understand. It is not a grind – you are playing football a couple of times, three times a week. The Championship is a much bigger slog than the Premier League. We’ve played Championship football most of our lives so we are used to Saturday-Tuesday-Saturday-Tuesday. This is like a rest for us, Saturday-Saturday.”

Or Sunday, in this case, but the message is clear: there is no danger of Burnley running out of gas any time soon.