London (AFP) – Burnley manager Sean Dyche will give Danny Drinkwater a second chance after the on-loan Chelsea midfielder was injured in an incident outside a nightclub.
Drinkwater was pictured with facial injuries after allegedly being involved in a drunken dispute with another footballer over a woman in the Manchester venue.
The former Leicester star, who won the Premier League title with the Foxes in 2016, was reportedly set upon and suffered an ankle problem in the row that is set to rule him out for several weeks.
Drinkwater has endured a miserable time since his move to Chelsea, barely playing for the west London club before being sent on loan to Burnley by new Blues boss Frank Lampard.
But Clarets boss Dyche isn’t willing to give up on Drinkwater
“They (footballers) are actually human beings, they do have private lives, which sometimes are not private, obviously. And sometimes they get in scrapes,” Dyche told reporters on Thursday.
“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 do we go from here’. So I think that’s where we’re at.”
Dyche declined to reveal whether Burnley have punished Drinkwater, who pleaded guilty to a drink-driving charge earlier this year, saying: “Just talked to him, the rest of it’s private.”
