BURNLEY have picked a tough season to attempt Premier League survival, according to their manager.

Sean Dyche’s side can take another massive step towards safety at Goodison Park this afternoon, where a win over Everton could push them 11 points clear of the drop line if other results go their way.

But the Turf Moor boss says it would have been easier to avoid relegation last season, when the top flight was in turmoil as 5,000/1 outsiders Leicester City won the title and a number of the traditional big clubs struggled. This year, he insists, normal service has been resumed.

“Last season would have been an easier season for someone like us because it was chaos in the division,” said Dyche.

“If you look at this season, it’s more or less what you could have written down at the beginning of the season.

“We’re probably an anomaly, but more or less the superpowers are back to being the superpowers, whereas last season if you’d have looked at the league you’d have gone, ‘My god, it’s all over the place!’.

“I use the word wisely, but (it would have been) easier in the sense that you go to clubs who normally would beat you hands down and win games against clubs in your bracket, but that wasn’t happening last season. There were all kinds of strange results.

“If you look at this year it’s more or less where people were predicting it would be, the anomalies being maybe Manchester City, people at the beginning of the season thinking would they run away with it?

“Liverpool had their spell, would they get involved in it?

“Chelsea have been probably the most consistently dominant, but they are still at the top end of the market.”

Dyche has always enjoyed proving the doubters wrong and took great satisfaction from last season’s 23-game unbeaten run that carried the Clarets to the Championship title.

And he says they have confounded the critics again this season, which shows they have improved and are now punching above their weight in the top flight.

He added: “I think we’re a stronger unit. Not the strongest, but we’re stronger than where we were.

“Therefore to back that up you’ve got to deliver where you can.

“I think we’ve delivered appropriately for us, and outside I think people would say we’ve done way better.

“We were written off last season when we got promoted, and at the beginning of this season written off by everyone – bookies’ favourites, everyone’s favourites, to do down, hands down. Not even make a show of it. Not in a nasty way. They just look and say, ‘Can they commit in the market? Can the players that they’ve got step up?’.

“So far we’ve shown what I think is an appropriate level of growth in the side.

“I didn’t think we were going to run away with it and have 50 points at this stage, but 36 points and with the games we’ve got remaining is a good marker of where the growth in the side is.

“It’s not how I feel about it, the stats tell you it’s a record number of points in three attempts and therefore it’s a fact that the team’s moved forward.”