BURNLEY are targeting a couple of ‘quality additions’ to Sean Dyche’s squad in the January transfer window, but chairman Mike Garlick has insisted the Clarets will always walk away from a deal if they’re not getting value for money.

Garlick said that Burnley were keen to target the European market for new signings, but stressed that building up intelligence on potential recruits and the fees being charged by some agents for dealing with Premier League clubs could prove potential headaches.

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And the Turf Moor chief said the Clarets were happy to bide their time in the January window if it means securing a beneficial deal, highlighting the £15million Derby County were demanding for Jeff Hendrick during the summer window, with Burnley eventually securing the signature of the Republic of Ireland midfielder for nearly £5million less than that on deadline day.

“The main aim is to be stronger on February 1 than December 31,” Garlick said of the winter transfer window.

“We are targeting a couple of quality additions, but it’s got to be quality and not quantity.”

The Clarets have begun to tap in to the European market more having signed Steven Defour from Anderlecht for £7.5m in the summer, while a deadline day deal for Poland winger Kamil Grosicki fell through at the 11th hour due to concerns about the player’s character.

Gathering an understanding of players away from the pitch is one challenge when signing players from abroad, while Garlick also said that European clubs and agents were keen to get their share of the Premier League TV deal through exorbitant fees.

“There’s a lot of European agents demanding millions of pounds as agent fees for players to come, which we reject straight away,” he said.

“A few issues have come about because of Brexit, the strength of the Euro means it’s slightly less attractive for a lot of European players to come here now. 1.10 to the pound as opposed to 1.35 as it was in June, that has tightened things a little bit.

“But we do want to look more and more to the European market because the UK is such a limited market, there’s only so many players at the level we’re at.

“It’s having the intelligence to know about the players, not the technical ability but what their behaviours are like, what they’re lifestyle is like, all those sort of things. You can’t get that from watching games.

“You go abroad and you often know nothing about the personality. It takes time to gather that intelligence of different markets. But if you don’t have it it’s a lot bigger risk when you sign someone, so that’s something we’ve got be careful of, and we saw that with a player on deadline day.”

Garlick admitted it was sometimes difficult to balance the desire to bring new players in without paying over the odds.

“It makes it difficult but you’ve got to be prepared to say no and quite often it’s about the players you don’t sign rather than the ones you do,” he added.

“It’s a real balance and it’s hard. You get to late July and you haven’t really signed more than one or two players, and I sense the mood with the fans, I feel it, but you’ve got to stick to the task and the belief you’re going to get the job done.

“We had to wait for the right players at the right price. One of the players we signed, until a couple of days before the closure of the transfer window, that particular club wanted £15million for that player.”