SEAN Dyche says Saturday’s match at Leicester City will be a test of character for his players – as they look to respond to a heavy defeat at West Bromwich Albion.

Burnley suffered their first major disappointment of the league season on Sunday when they were thrashed 4-0 at the Hawthorns.

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After encouraging performances at the start of the campaign Dyche admitted his side were well below their best at the weekend.

He hopes the result will not hit confidence for the first time this season and says the trip to Leicester will be a gauge of whether the players have been affected by events at West Brom.

“We’ll soon see how important it was,” Dyche said. “The next game comes round pretty quickly, so it will be quite apparent how the result affects us.”

A number of players were below par at the Hawthorns and Dyche knows that cannot happen again if Burnley, now bottom of the Premier League table, are to pick up the points they need to stay up.

“The biggest learning curve is you have to be on your performance levels every week,” he said.

“We’re a team learning about this division and growing, and you have to be at it every week.

“If three or four are not quite on top of their game, you're going to get hurt. You can’t carry players at this level.”

Burnley have now gone 616 minutes without a goal in all competitions – more than 10 hours of football, and almost seven complete matches.

Dyche has called on players within the club’s ranks to step up and take the responsibility of ending that goal drought.

“It’s not a concern, it’s a reality,” he said of the Clarets’ run without a goal.

“We have to affect it, we work with the players in training, we work on the mentality of it as well.

“Players get that weird feeling of ‘When are we going to score?’ or ‘Who is going to score?’.

“But one of our mantras is be the man who makes a difference, and every player has to play with that.

“We need one to go in of course.

“We’ve got to keep working. It’s relentless.

“The games keep coming.”

The Clarets are assessing the fitness of central midfielders Dean Marney and David Jones (above) this week, with Dyche optimistic of Jones’ return from injury.

Burnley are already without Danny Ings and Sam Vokes, while Matt Taylor has been suffering from an Achilles problem.