A Burnley pub was named after Sean Dyche because of Europa League qualification

Burnley fans will be able to drink in The Royal Dyche near Turf Moor next season, after a pub was renamed in the Clarets manager’s honour after they qualified for Europe.

Sean Dyche’s side secured a seventh-place finish in the Premier League to ensure they will participate in next season’s Europa League, their first continental competition since they made the quarter-finals of the 1966-67 Inter-Cities Fairs Cup.

And while helping Burnley to European football will rank pretty high on Dyche’s list of career achievements, having a pub named after him must feel similarly gratifying.

A board outside The Princess Royal, one of the closest pubs to Turf Moor, had previously promised the Burnley boss free drinks after he kept them in the Premier League at the first attempt in the 2016/17 season, and a strong start to the 2017/18 campaign led to the stakes being raised.

“We wrote an A-board saying that he could drink here for free when we gained another season in the Premier League,” landlady Justine Lorriman told Press Association Sport.

“We then beat Stoke at home (in December) and went fourth. We’ve never done so well, there was just a big high.”

The pub remained true to its word, and on June 1 it reopened as The Royal Dyche.

Achieving European football appeared unlikely when the Clarets endured an 11-game winless run from December to March.

However, they recovered to win five on the spin from March to April, and finished five points clear of eighth-place Everton, securing not only a Europa League place, but a pretty special tribute from a local pub too.