WEST Ham United boss Sam Allardyce says Sean Dyche's fine managerial reputation should not suffer if Burnley are relegated from the Premier League.

The Clarets are on the verge of returning to the Championship following Saturday's 1-0 loss at West Ham, which left Dyche's men eight points adrift of safety with only three games left.

Former Blackburn Rovers manager Allardyce has experience of trying to keep clubs in the Premier League on a lesser budget than rival teams, and knows just how tough a task that is.

"It is extremely tough," he said.

"It's whether your owners will balance out that that is the factor. That is the key element.

"If you're struggling to win football matches and you haven't quite got as much quality as you perhaps need to try to survive at this level, then should the manager suffer from that?

"I don't think at Burnley the owners will look upon Sean and his players as doing anything other than making a very good fist of it, even if they go down.

"They should look after him and hopefully they might get back up again and be stronger the next time.

"They're not dead yet, they'll keep fighting to the end.

"But it looks a difficult task for them now."

Allardyce was pleased to complete West Ham's first double of the season, after winning 3-1 at Turf Moor in October, and admitted his side had a stroke of luck when Michael Duff was harshly dismissed for a professional foul on Cheikhou Kouyate inside the box.

“It looked unfortunate yes,” he said of Duff's red card.

“The penalty is no doubt. Obviously converting that penalty was very important because we haven’t scored any more goals than that.

“We should have scored more but we didn’t and we’ve won 1-0.”