Sean Dyche said: “You come into a group, you can imagine my knowledge is pretty fair of these players, because I’ve been in it a long time. I know most of the players here pretty well. You form an opinion from a distance of what they’re going to be like, what they can offer sort of thing, but you can’t define every detail of it. So to lose a player like that, there must have been a reason for it, but by the time I got here… I’m learning more and more about the depth of the club, the goods the bads, all that, but it’s still not relevant, because it’s relevant from the day I came in. I couldn’t affect that (sale of Gordon), it’s done. So we couldn’t affect the transfer window. I saw the people working hard, everyone was working hard, I was here until God knows what time, so I saw how hard they were working. But once it’s done you have to move forward. I just get the feeling sometimes there’s lots of noise about the past but it’s too late, it’s done, so now it’s about getting forward now, you have to keep going forward. You have to realise the past, of course and you have to make sense of it, but only as a reflection, because it’s: ‘right, this is a restart, we have to take on the challenges now.’ Manage what it is now, not manage all the noise of the past, because it is done it’s fact, whatever it is, opinion fact whatever, it’s done.”
Sean Dyche admits he was powerless to prevent Anthony Gordon joining Newcastle United ahead of the former Everton winger’s Goodison Park return. Everton’s former home-grown hero was already in advanced talks over a £45million transfer to St James’ Park when Dyche was finalising the details over his own appointment in January. Asked if he regretted not being able to work alongside Gordon, Dyche said: “You are pragmatic because you are not here, I wasn’t here when he was sold.