BURNLEY'S pre-season plans are set to change this week as the focus moves from fitness to tactics.

Sean Dyche managed to get most of his first team squad a full 90 minutes of action on Saturday as the Clarets played concurrent friendlies at National League North sides Kidderminster Harriers and Alfreton Town.

The Turf chief split his squad on Saturday in a bid to get a full game into his players early in pre-season and he has been delighted with the fitness work so far.

The Clarets didn't have a game last midweek, with Dyche preferring to focus on fitness at Gawthorpe, but they are in action tonight as they make the short trip to Deepdale to face Championship side Preston North End.

Dyche will asses how his men came through the games on Saturday before deciding how long they will feature for tonight, while Sam Vokes missed out at the weekend with an ankle injury and James Tarkowski, Chris Long and Ben Mee all picked up knocks at Alfreton.

"We’ll see how the players recover and the feedback from them, we’ve got the GPS on them so we’ll see how the stats are looking as well," the Clarets chief said.

"But they’ve had a really good week, (the two games) were a really good finish to a good week, I’m really pleased with the work."

Having got his side up to speed with fitness work in Ireland and back at Gawthorpe, and now got close to a full game in most of them, Dyche will change the focus this week to begin on pitch preparations for the Premier League season, which gets underway on August 12.

"That’s the idea," Dyche said. "We get these minutes into the players. It doesn’t soften the training load, it just becomes a sharper training load.

"Some of the longer stuff, some of the more methodical stuff, we’ve done now we can start to condense it and start sharpening it up.

"The games become more having a look at the balance, it’s still physical, but it’s looking at the tactical side, the way the players combine and that sort of thing."

The quality of opposition is now rising for the Clarets as well. Having faced Shamrock Rovers' second string and two sixth tier sides so far they now come up against Championship opposition this week in North End and Nottingham Forest, before next week's Turf Moor double header against Celta Vigo and Hannover.

Preston have already played five pre-season friendly this summer, beating Bamber Bridge 7-0, Stockport County 2-1, Morecambe 2-0 and Accrington Stanley 3-2 before Saturday's 1-1 draw with Premier League Newcastle.

It's been a promising start to the summer for new Deepdale boss Alex Neil, who replaced Simon Grayson after he moved to Sunderland.

And Neil was pleased with what he saw on Saturday against the Magpies.

"I thought it was a good game, I didn't think there was a lot in the game, I was really pleased with our lads to adopt a different style," he said.

"I think at the start of the match in the first 15 minutes we looked a bit tentative and a bit scared because we were playing Newcastle but then I thought we grew in confidence as the first half wore on and I thought our best spell was leading up to half-time really.

"At the start of the second half, I thought that confidence was displayed then as well. Obviously when you make changes, the game changes a little bit but all in all, I thought our boys did great."