SEAN Dyche was pleased with the fitness of his players after they came through the first pre-season friendly of the summer with a 3-1 win over Stade Nyonnais.

Andre Gray, Ashley Barnes and Michael Keane scored in the first half for the Clarets, before Dyche made 10 outfield changes at half-time, with young goalkeeper Connor Mitchell coming on in the second half for Paul Robinson.

The friendly came at the end of a training camp in Evian-les-Bains, on the other side of Lake Geneva, and although the players have stepped up the work this week with several double sessions, Dyche was pleased to see them come through a competitive friendly fixture against their Swiss third division opponents.

“You can play training games but it’s not the same thing,” the Clarets chief said.

“Even with these games, their low key but there’s a competitive edge, as you saw with Nyon, they worked hard, they were fit, and that’s good for our players.

“It’s a good early marker for the players to see where they’re at and they looked good physically, and we’ll get the GPS stats as well.”

While Burnley were easy winners at the Stade de Colovray, next to UEFA’s headquarters, Dyche admitted he was more interested in the fitness than the result against a team who had played Sporting Lisbon in a friendly 24 hours previously.

“The result is irrelevant, at this stage really it’s all about the fitness of the players and the fact they’ve come through unsctahed, which is good,” he said.

“We want to build up their fitness, obviously it starts on the training pitch, but they need games as well, so it was good to come through with no injuries.”

Burnley return home on Saturday and play their first domestic pre-season friendly on Tuesday night at Morecambe as they take another step towards full fitness.

“It’s only a small step (here), there’s plenty of bigger steps to come, but the mixture of training and game time is the essential thing to get players fully fit and ready for the season,” said Dyche. “We do that well we think.”