WHILE Burnley spent just £30million on new players this summer, all in the final week of the transfer window, newly promoted Fulham splashed out almost £100million on new recruits.

Four of the Cottagers’ new arrivals would have equalled or broken Burnley’s £15million transfer record, and Turf boss Sean Dyche believes the kind of money being spent, even by newly promoted clubs now, is making the challenge of competing in the Premier League tougher by the year for the Clarets.

The Turf Moor boss urged the board to loosen the purse strings this summer to try and get deals done and admitted he wanted ‘one or two’ more in.

There was no such difficulty at Craven Cottage, with 13 new faces arriving, including Andre Schurrle on loan and midfielder Jean-Michael Serri, who was a target for Barcelona a year ago.

It makes competing on the pitch ever more difficult for Dyche.

“It’s life at Burnley, it’s not new to me,” he said.

“It’s a really difficult balance to achieve, to try and find the right players, the right wage level, the right fee, the right ability and consistency, it’s very difficult.

“And to do it in the financial parameters we have is hard.

“This year we didn’t get all the players I was hoping to get, but we still got some good players. I still think we needed more, one, maybe two.”

The challenge for Burnley to compete is becoming increasingly difficult by the big spending of other clubs.

Dyche added: “We mentioned the other week about how the financial model of football has gone. Most owners don’t care about that. They just run their club in a manner those choose to do.

“That’s fine and there’s no angle to that. If you are a very rich person and want to run your club your way, that’s up to you.

“This club doesn’t. They want to make sure not just the next month, but the next year, two years, three years are looked after. The challenge then is to still be competitive after that. To get a team to develop and win and keep rolling that system out every year.

“It does get harder because the numbers keep going up and up. I said a few weeks back we’ve got to chase the numbers, not be in front of them.

“Look at what Brighton and Huddersfield are spending. If they are running away with the numbers, we’ve got to chase that but not be in front.

“If the gap gets too big, then it becomes really, really difficult.”