Burnley
boss Sean Dyche is happy to give Danny Drinkwater a second chance after the
midfielder was injured in an incident outside a nightclub.
The on-loan Chelsea midfielder was pictured with facial injuries and also
suffered an ankle problem that is set to rule him out for a number of weeks.
Dyche is known as a manager who values professionalism highly but, publicly,
he declined to criticise Drinkwater, saying: "[Footballers] are actually
human beings, they do have private lives, which sometimes are not private,
obviously. And sometimes they get in scrapes.
"He's certainly old enough and wise enough to know you do whatever you can
to not get in scrapes, but sometimes it happens.
"We've been big over our time here - you can't just talk about development
when it's good news, you also have to work with players if things are not
quite as good.
"It's been more that sort of situation, have a chat with him and say, what
happened first of all, what was the situation that led to it. OK, let's move
away from that, now where to do we go from here. So I think that's where
we're at."
Dyche declined to reveal whether Burnley have punished Drinkwater, saying:
"Just talked to him, the rest of it's private."
The 29-year-old made his Clarets debut in the Carabao Cup defeat by
Sunderland last month having missed the start of the season to build up his
fitness after being frozen out of the picture at Chelsea.
Dyche added: "He's a player that I'd worked with before at Watford. I think
I know a little bit about what he's about, he's had a lot happen since then
of course, a lot of good successes in his career, so I think we want to get
him back to that really.
"This is just a bump in the situation. We want to make sure he gets back to
being fully fit, playing well, the eye of the tiger that it takes to be a
top player."
Speaking on the injury sustained by Drinkwater, Dyche said: "That bit's not
ideal. It's part and parcel of the incident. It's not too serious but it's
still going to be certainly a couple of weeks and then getting another game
in to catch up.
"When you take a player in, he becomes a part of us. So we will work with
Danny and try to help him and, importantly, he has to get himself fit."
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