FOR Sean Dyche this weekend's Turf Moor showdown with Watford will be a double reunion with the Hornets strikers.

While Andre Gray is returning to the club he left in the summer for £18million, Dyche will also come up against Troy Deeney, the Watford striker who impressed under Dyche's stewardship at Vicarage Road.

The Turf boss reminisced about his time working with Deeney during the 2011/12 season on Thursday and remembered a lightbulb moment for the striker, who has recently passed 100 league goals for the club.

“I remember being at a fans’ forum with him and someone said, ‘If you don’t mind me asking Sean, who’s going to get the goals?’," Dyche said.

“He was siting next to me, and butted in and went ‘me’. This sounds strange, but at that moment, I thought ‘you will’.

“There was a different kind of conviction in his voice, it’s hard to explain, there was a determination.

“It’s not literally that moment, you can’t define that, but people change, he had a manner about him.

“We’d sold Marvin Sordell, and he jumped in in a way I thought, there’s fire in his stomach and he never really looked back.

“Obviously, I don’t think that was the moment his career clicked, but it was the moment his mentality really began to really firm up."

Crucially Deeney backed up those words on the pitch. Having scored three goals in 40 games the year before Dyche was promoted to the job of manager at Watford, the Birmingham-born striker quadrupled that tally in Dyche's season in the hotseat and he hasn't looked back since.

“He got 12 goals that year, and before that hadn’t scored anywhere near that," the Clarets chief said.

“His mentality, his performances, confidence started growing and building.

“He had a longer adaptation to the realities of the game, kept learning and adjusting and turned out to be a very good player, particularly for that club, back to back 20 goals over three seasons.

“A really good player and a good bloke."

After that 12 goal season Deeney hit 20, 25 and 21 in the following seasons and since getting promotion with the Hornets he has scored 15 and 10 goals in his last two campaigns.

But Dyche joked: “Troy used to say I was the most important manager in his career, then the next manager was, and the next one. When you’ve had five or six, they’ve all been important!

“He won’t mind me saying that!

“He did really well, I was very pleased for him how he broke through."

Watford centre back Adrian Mariappa is another former Dyche charge at Vicarage Road, having returned to the club last summer.

Dyche played alongside Mariappa before managing him and the defender was full of praise for Dyche's managerial ability this week, and the Burnley boss is pleased to see the 31-year-old enjoying a successful top flight career.

“Maps, in a rare reserve game for me – I wasn't dropped very often - I think it was Charlton away, he played alongside me as a young kid and I thought then he was decent, for a small 'un he's decent," he said.

"Very professional, very athletic. He's gone on to have a fantastic career."