BURNLEY will finally get their hands on the Championship trophy tonight but boss Sean Dyche voiced his frustration at the decision not to make the presentation at The Valley on Saturday.

The Clarets wrapped up the title with a 3-0 success against Charlton in south London, but the Football League had decided not to make the trophy presentation on the pitch at the end.

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Instead, the trophy known as ‘The Lady’ was at the Riverside Stadium for Middlesbrough’s game against Brighton, even though it would have taken a freak set of results for Boro to take top spot.

With Charlton fans planning more protests against their Belgian owner Roland Duchâtelet the League decided not to risk a trophy presentation on the pitch.

Instead, captain Tom Heaton and the rest of the squad lifted an inflatable trophy in front of the away end, before getting their hands on the real thing at 6.45pm tonight on the steps of Burnley Town Hall.

Asked if not getting the trophy had taken the shine off the day, Dyche said: “That’s for other people to decide.

“It’s unfortunate, I don’t think it’s the right thing, but they have to make a decision on these things with what happened, what might happen and the crowd etc.

“It’s a shame but let’s face it, the main thing is we know without a medal it doesn’t matter. My medal is in my brain and I know it’s there.”

Midfielder Joey Barton was even more critical, brandishing the Football League’s decision ‘a joke’.

“It’s a bit of a sickener that for whatever reason they haven’t decided to present us the trophy which I think is a bit of a joke,” said the 33-year-old.

“They’ve taken the trophy to Middlesbrough when they were never ever going to win the league.

“That takes a little bit of the gloss off it, but we’ll get it Monday night. It should have been here because we are the champions.”

Victory at the Valley extended Burnley’s remarkable unbeaten run to half a season, 23 games.

“It’s amazing,” said Dyche. “I’m not sure how many times that has been done, if it has already been done. I’m not sure if it will get done again.

“The Championship is fraught with ups and downs and strange results.

“It’s a great testament to the players and the mentality of the players to keep doing that and keep performing week in, week out to make sure that we weren’t beaten and to make sure that we got enough points on the board to do the job.”

And the Clarets chief admitted claiming the silverware, after finishing second two years ago, meant a lot to him.

“It means a lot,” he said. “We went up two years and we couldn’t quite catch Leicester, although we had a good try.

“The main job is to get promoted but once you’ve done that you want to win it. We made it clear at the beginning of the season that that was our intention.”

Dyche said the Premier League was now going to pose ‘a massive challenge’ to his side, but he urged his players to enjoy their celebrations first.

“We spoke about it last week and I reminded them of that (enjoying it),” he said. “Some of them said ‘gaffer you said that two years ago and here we are again’, but it’s a healthy habit.

“There’s a massive challenge coming our way, we know that, we’ll be written off immediately as we were last time, but we’ve earnt the right to be in there so we’ll make sense of this, have a good weekend and then get them ready for next year.”