In came Jeff Hendrick for a club record £10.5m from Derby County, Johann Berg Gudmundsson and Nick Pope from Charlton Athletic, and Jon Flanagan and Patrick Bamford on loans from Liverpool and Chelsea respectively but one transfer caught the headlines as Dyche strayed away from his usual norm of signing UK-based players.
That was central midfielder Steven Defour, who arrived from Anderlecht on a three-year deal for a sizable fee of £8 million – a club-record fee at the time – with high hopes that he could bring his Belgian international and Champions League pedigree to the Clarets.
Defour spent three seasons at Turf Moor and while he showed some signs of his clear ability and was liked by fans and boss Dyche alike, he had several persistent injuries that prevented the Clarets seeing the best of him week in, week out.
Defour was inconsistent for Burnley
Once thought of as the ‘the next big thing in Belgian football,’ Defour had built a reputation for being a fiery, controversial figure in his spells with Genk, Standard Liege, Porto, and Anderlecht, and became Burnley’s record signing upon his arrival, for a figure that was beaten by Jeff Hendrick later that same month.
He started life at Turf Moor in fine fashion – he assisted Andre Gray for the second goal of a 2–0 home win over Liverpool on his Burnley debut, then netted his first goal for the club with a stunning strike against Hull City in his third appearance and provided a brace of assists two weeks later in a 2-0 win over Watford.
Defour started 15 of the club’s first 23 league outings of the season, but was unable to complete a full 90 minutes in that time due to fitness issues and soon picked up a hamstring injury in late January that ruled him out of the next six games – he then featured just three more times in the final 15 games to curtail a mixed debut season.
He was much more influential in the first half of his second season, starting in all of the club’s first 24 league games of the campaign and netting a brilliant free-kick in a 2-2 draw at Old Trafford in December 2017, in what was surely the crowning moment of his Clarets career.
Just over a month later, a cartilage problem in his knee ended his season prematurely and ruled him out of the 2018 World Cup with Belgium – he later admitted to The Athletic that his injury issues made him question his future in football.
