Sean Dyche to look at every possibility to reduce Burnley's injury crisis

The Clarets chief labelled the current injury list as the worse he has dealt with in five years at Turf Moor.

With Tom Heaton, Robbie Brady, Stephen Ward, Jon Walters and Chris Wood already out Dyche was handed further blows this week with James Tarkowski struggling with a groin problem, Steven Defour (knee) facing a spell on the sidelines and Dean Marney suffering a setback on his return from a knee injury.

Defour could yet require surgery and with Heaton, Brady and Walters have already gone under the knife this season.

And Dyche is looking at every aspect of preparation to see if any changes can be made.

“It’s a tough one, you question things,” he said. “Then a player will go for an op and the specialist will say he’s in unbelievable shape, so therefore we’re not far away from what we think is correct.

“There’s a lot of good things, but you don’t want to put it (the growing injury list) off as an ‘oh well’. That’s not how we work here.

“Everything is done for a reason, so there’s a thought about what can we do? It’s unlikely we can do that much but we still consider our side of it.

“Are they refuelling right? Are they hydrating right? Is their training and strength and conditioning right? Are they getting enough rest, emotional rest, how is their private life and their wellbeing? They’re important things.”

Dyche revealed he and his staff had looked at and altered a number of things in a bid to try and reduce the number of injuries affecting his side.

“When I talk about injuries, it’s about trying to control the things that are controllable, such as soft tissue problems,” he added.

“The big ones, such as Robbie and Tom, you can’t do anything about them. We’ve had knee (ligaments) here in the past. You can’t do anything about them.

“If someone twists funny in the middle of a game, or lands funny, or someone lands on them, there’s nothing you can do about that.

“We always look at how the training is and how the feel is. In the Championship, for example, there are lots of games, but it’s more or less regular games, Saturday, Tuesday, Saturday, Tuesday, Saturday, Tuesday. The Premier League is all over the place, different games, different training formats. We’ve looked at that.

“Changes in pitch surfaces, we’ve looked at it. Our own regime and how we run it, we’ve looked at that. Days off, rest, we’ve looked at that. Sometimes it’s just all of those things coming together, out of your hands, rather than the controllables.

“We try to look at what we’re doing, to try to minimise those moments and make the body strong enough to cope with those moments.”

The loss of Defour could yet hit Burnley hard. The 29-year-old has been complaining of a problem in his knee in recent weeks and Dyche has refused to rule out surgery to solve the problem.

“We’ll have to wait and see. It depends on the specialist’s view,” he said.

“It’s sort of a wear and tear situation. Sometimes they are (requiring surgery), sometimes they’re not. Sometimes they’re best left alone.

“That’s why I said we’re a bit unsure ourselves for that reason. It’s more of a wear and tear thing than a case of it being any moment where something’s happened.”