THE signing of Steven Defour looks a real statement of intent from Burnley and I think it’s a great deal, writes Paul Weller.

You’ve got to have aspirations and he’s within Burnley’s price range, it’s not stupid figures. It’s a great signing, he’s a fantastic player, and he’s got experience and his quality.

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Hopefully that sort of signing will open the door for a few more.

If there were players in the pipeline who were thinking about signing and they saw that type of player coming in, that helps. That first one over the line can start a domino effect.

It’s a statement of intent. I think Stan Ternent did it a few years ago when we got Kevin Ball in, all of a sudden there was a bit of interest and people thought ‘wow, they mean business’.

Any professional will want to come and play in the Premier League. If you’re playing in the Championship at the moment then the Premier League is where you want to be.

I know we want to get the signings in early in pre-season but it’s hard. Years ago it was easy to get people in early but the market has changed so much, it’s easy for us to say ‘get them in early’ but the opportunities aren’t there otherwise they would do that - they’re as desperate as we are to get the deals done.

Now everyone has seen the standard they can bring in. If they can bring a couple more in like that it would be great. We don’t need to rip the team apart, the mentality is great and the will to win is there, it’s just a little bit of extra quality. It’s not massive numbers, it’s three, maybe four quality players. I think that would be enough to be a team that can survive in that league.

Sean Dyche needs to look at that squad every week and think ‘what’s my team this week?’.

At the moment selection is fairly easy. He’s got the same team from last season, which is understandable because they did not let him down last season, but we’ve got two huge games coming up now.

They were very solid in the Premier League two years ago and hopefully they can show that this weekend against a Liverpool team that looks to be bang in form.

The worry at the moment is scoring goals. I think that’s eight of the last 10 in the Premier League we’ve not scored in. That’s the area to improve on.

Defensively we’re strong, David Jones and Dean Marney protect the back four ever so well, now we need that extra bit of quality to create more chances and help Andre Gray out, as he is looking really sharp at the moment.

I’d like an extra striker in as well to add to that competition. Andre and Sam Vokes are a good partnership but it won’t always come off for them so I think we need a bit more competition.