Sports reporter Tyrone Marshall discusses the talking points from Burnley's 3-1 pre-season friendly win over Stade Nyonnais in Switzerland

Aiden O’Neill

It’s been a memorable couple of weeks for the 18-year-old Australian midfielder.

He trained with the first-team at Gawthorpe last week and was included in the squad for the training camp in Evian-les-Bains, before making his debut from the start against Stade Nyonnais.

On top of that he also signed a new three-year deal with the Clarets, a clear sign that hopes are high for his development.

Lancashire Telegraph:

He showed why he is so highly-rated at Burnley on Friday. He was calm and composed in possession  and showed a glimpse of his ability with a brilliant, raking pass for Ashley Barnes, before clipping in the cross from which Barnes headed in the second goal.

There’s plenty of work to still be done but O’Neill can take great confidence from the past couple of weeks.

On the road to match fitness

Boss Sean Dyche was keen to play down the importance of the result in the build-up to this fixture, insisting it was merely another marker on the way to finding full fitness in pre-season.

Lancashire Telegraph:

After two weeks of training, first at Gawthorpe and then on the shores of Lake Geneva, this represented a first chance for most of the Clarets’ squad to get some match action, with no outfield playing getting more than 45 minutes.

There will be inevitably be some rustiness to be shaken off at this stage and the most important thing, as Dyche stressed afterwards, is that everyone came through unscathed.

While training has been good, and tough, in Evian, there really is no substitute to matches, even in pared-down pre-season mode.

Relishing pre-season

If there’s one Burnley player who is looking forward to the rigours of pre-season this summer it’s Ashley Barnes.

Twelve months ago he was in the early stages of the recovery from the cruciate knee ligament injury he suffered on the final day of the last Premier League season at Aston Villa.

The 26-year-old returned in April but he spent the final month of the season trying to get back to speed, and he was inevitably short of the levels his teammates were at at that stage of the campaign.

Now the former Brighton striker sees this pre-season as a chance to return to his very best, and he looked sharp on Friday night, linking up well with Andre Gray and getting on the scoresheet.

After losing almost a full season in his career Barnes is determined to hit the ground running when the season gets underway on August 13.