Sean Dyche has been sacked as Burnley manager. It's legitimately shocking news. He was the longest serving Premier League manager and has lead the club for nearly ten years. Burnley sit in 18th place, four behind Everton and recently lost to Norwich but Dyche has avoided relegation so many times, it's hard to know why this year would be any different. To be sacked on a Friday, two days out from a massive game against West Ham, with no successor named, gives the sense that the club is panicking.
As the Premier League experienced radical change in the last decade, Dyche became one of the more colourful Premier League managers simply by being as English as they come. His gravelly voice was iconic.
In 2018, Soren Andersen, a former teammate of Sean Dyche's at Bristol City in the late 90s, claimed that a staple of the Burnley manager's diet - bizarrely - was earthworms. Dyche's gravelly tone may have had something to do with his penchant to channel Bear Grylls, Andersen believed.
At a press conference, ahead of his side's game against Man Utd in 2018, Dyche was forced to deny the Danish international's claims.
"Maybe the voice comes from eating rainworms, because every time we trained, he used to eat rainworms. Yes, he did. It was horrible, I’ve never experienced anything like it. It was like: ‘whoops, there’s a rainworm’ and then he ate it," Andersen told Danish football podcast Fodboldministeriet.
There was good reason for Andersen hold this impression: Dyche said that he would regularly pretend to eat earthworms on the training ground.
I also smoke exhaust pipes. I have gravel for breakfast. Those three combined often are the things that keep this voice sounding how it is.
It’s fair to say I didn’t actually eat the worms. It was a bit of banter I used to have - I’ve done it here and Watford too - that you get a nice, big juicy worm hanging out of your mouth.
It wobbles, wriggling around. Look as if you’re chewing it and then spit it out. Soren has probably taking it a bit too far. He’s a good lad.
We expect Dyche will be back in management soon. He will be missed at Turf Moor.
