Sean Dyche: Is Pep Guardiola or Claudio Ranieri the pizza genius?

Sean Dyche of Burnley
The majority of Sean Dyche's playing career was spent at Chesterfield

Burnley boss Sean Dyche believes the contrasting attitude to players eating pizza highlights the "spin" surrounding foreign managers in the Premier League.

Manchester City's Pep Guardiola has been lauded for banning pizza yet Claudio Ranieri was hailed for using it as motivation in Leicester's title win.

Dyche thinks foreign coaches and their ideas are deemed more "snazzy" and shown more deference by "the populace".

"Two geniuses, one adding pizza and one taking it away," said the 45-year-old.

"I saw [Manchester City midfielder Samir] Nasri talking about the diet that Pep has brought in. He's stopped pizza, he's a genius already in my view.

"The year before, Claudio Ranieri was adding pizza at Leicester. I'm being flippant but I'm being serious as well. It's true, that is the misperception.

"Nasri was talking about how this new diet was amazing, saying we don't eat junk food. We've been doing that since I got here. I did it at Watford, so do other English managers."

Christian Fuchs Twitter
Defender Christian Fuchs was one of the Leicester players to enjoy pizza last season

Dyche also cited the praise for new Chelsea manager Antonio Conte's training regimes at Stamford Bridge as evidence of the greater deference shown to foreign managers' methods.

"Antonio Conte came in at Chelsea and he got commended for bringing a hard, fast, new leadership to Chelsea, which involved doing 800m runs, 400m runs and 200m runs," he added.

"I thought that was interesting because if you see us doing that you'd say we're running them round in circles - 'a young English dinosaur manager. Doesn't know what he's doing'.

"At Chelsea under Conte everyone thinks it's amazing."

Dyche is one of only seven home-grown managers - including Hull City caretaker Mike Phelan - preparing for the start of the new Premier League season on Saturday.

Seven teams have made full-time appointments for the coming campaign, but only Sunderland chose a British coach in David Moyes.

Kettering-born Dyche believes there is an "edge towards foreign coaches and managers".

"Why do you buy a branded pair of jeans rather than the other pair? Because you think they're better, but they might not be," he said.

"I think there's a bit of that, sometimes it's just 'a bigger name is a bigger name'. There are foreign owners, there are lots of foreign players, so it might be that a foreign manager is chosen to work with foreign players.

"There's a bit of spin. There's still a thirst from the populace for foreign managers and foreign players. They're a bit more snazzy, 'let's see what this Belgian manager or this Argentinian manager can do'."

'England role preposterous'

Sean Dyche
Sean Dyche is preparing for a second tilt at a Premier League campaign

Dyche has won two promotions in three seasons at Turf Moor, guiding the Clarets back to the Premier League at the first attempt last term.

He and 38-year-old Eddie Howe were mentioned as possible contenders for the England manager's job before it was given to Sam Allardyce last month.

But Dyche believes neither he nor the Bournemouth boss are ready for the national team job.

"We're nowhere near ready, us youngsters. We're kids in the grand scheme of things," he said.

"We're novice hurdlers, we're still learning. It's preposterous for any of us young managers to be linked with the England job."