BURNLEY boss Sean Dyche refuses to put a price on his teenage sensation Dwight McNeil.

The 19-year-old flew on to the scene for Burnley since the turn of the year and hasn't looked back.

McNeil is the best performing teenager in the Premier League this season, and there has been plenty of speculation linking him to a move away.

“It’s a strange one, regarding his worth, I look at some of the figures bandied about for some of these young players, and I don’t know what you put on him," said Dyche.

“His worth to the team I’m more interested in, and that’s the way he’s delivering performances.

“I like his assuredness, he’s quiet, he’s calm, but there’s a toughness in there, particularly to have the ball.

“That’s something that can come and go with players, but he’s certainly got that desire to grip a game with the ball, ‘give me the ball, I want to do something’.

“That’s a powerful thing, particularly in a young player, because sometimes that’s hard, but he will have the ball under any circumstances, he wants the ball, to try and produce something."

“I’m not really bothered about aligning him with any other players, I’m more interested in what he does, and he’s doing well for himself and the team, and the club," added the Burnley boss.

“We’ve mostly left him alone, a few prompts, a few pointers, but I believe in self-learning as well as the coaching, analysis, debriefing - it can be too much at times.

“So he’ll learn from the first team environment, his performances, and the little things we offer him, little details in performance, and we try and find a healthy balance, which we’ve done her historically.

“He deserves the credit for taking that self-learning on, and that’s really important in modern football.

Premier League teams have been linked with signing the Clarets star, but boss Dyche doesn't want to put a price tag on him.

“He’s been here long enough to see that happen to other players, hopefully he’ll take it as one of those things," said Dyche.

“He’s certainly in a balanced environment here, where I can’t see him running away with any outside noise, he seems to be quite steady and enjoying his football.

“That’s what I want him to do, play with a smile on his face and enjoy the challenge."

Robbie Brady and Johann Berg Gudmundsson are players who have seen their playing time cut due to McNeil's good form.

“That is the great thing about football, I played for 20 years and you’re always looking over your shoulder, is the next one getting signed, coming through the system, who’s showing signs of what?" Dyche added.

“That’s the in-house competition I often speak about, and Robbie and Johann are established Premier League players, internationals, and they’ll be thinking ‘this kid deserves his chance’.

“I think there’s an honesty about our group and I’ve not had too many gripes from Johann and Robbie, they want to play and get disgruntled if they’re not, but not that disgruntled where they’re looking and thinking ‘I should be playing’, because they know Dwight is delivering performances."