SEAN Dyche said he was ‘absolutely delighted’ with the strength of character his players showed in defeat at Watford.

The Clarets saw Jeff Hendrick sent off just seven minutes into the clash at Vicarage Road and they were behind three minutes later when Troy Deeney scored.

M’Baye Niang doubled the advantage on the stroke of half-time but Burnley dominated the second half and they halved the deficit through Ashley Barnes’ penalty.

“Fantastic,” Dyche said of his side’s second half performance.

“I don’t usually overpraise the side but I thought they were fantastic, particularly second half.

“To get the early blow of having a man sent-off and then the blow of a second goal just before half time, our mentality to see through that and still take the game on to try and win it was absolutely outstanding.”

Asked if his side had deserved a point from the game in the end, Dyche added: “Probably. They (Watford) had the one golden chance which Tom (Heaton) made a fine save, but it’s 11 v 10 and they had one golden chance, that’s a pretty good showing from your defenders and the shape of the team.

“We made enough to probably nick something out of it. I thought we gave everything to do that and I’m absolutely delighted with my players today.”

Dyche believes his side would have won the game had it remained 11-a-side and said they created enough chances to get a result.

“Robbie (Brady) when he gets in behind them and a number of goalmouth scrambles from set-pieces, we know they’d conceded a lot from set pieces, we thought we could be effective on that,” said the Clarets chief.

“If it stays 11 v 11 and we carry on performing like that I think we’d probably have won the game.”

Dyche was delighted with the way his team responded to the early loss of Hendrick and admitted Michael Oliver had been correct to dismiss the Republic of Ireland international, although he questioned why Niang hadn’t been shown a second yellow card for celebrating his goal with the fans.

“I was so pleased with the way we responded to that,” Dyche said of Hendrick’s red card.

“We wanted to carry on attacking, we wanted to take the game on, we left Andre (Gray) on to try and get him coming off the wide areas, Barnesy I thought was terrific, Joey Barton as well, there were a number of good performances today.

“It worked to a degree and then we got Robbie on, and Westy as well, it was good to get them into the group.”

Dyche added of the red card: “It’s a tough one. In the modern game the ref is under pressure to give it.

“I’ve looked back at it, there is minimal actual contact, but his foot hits the top of the ball and goes over the top of the ball, so I think he has to send him off. Days gone by maybe not, but we all know it’s the modern game.”