The Sean Dyche era at Burnley was littered with success both on and off the pitch, and his signing of Stephen Ward will certainly go down as one of the best decisions of his near decade-long tenure.
The Clarets hijacked Brighton’s move to sign Ward in 2014 and it proved a masterstroke, with the nominal fee paid of around £500,000 turning out to be huge value for money as the defender stayed at Turf Moor until 2019.
Ward was involved in many good times at Burnley, as he helped get them promoted in 2015/16, keep them in the Premier League for the first time ever in 2016/17, get them into Europe in 2017/18, and subsequently play in the Europa League in 2018/19.
The left-back was a staple of an imperious Burnley backline in the early Dyche years and came with some much-needed Premier League experience when he signed, having played at the top level earlier in his career with Wolves.
His influence on the side should never be understated, and in pound-for-pound terms, he has to go down as one of the best signings of the Dyche era.
Ward was Mr Reliable at left-back
Was Ward ever the most high-flying and exciting full-backs? Probably not.
But he was reliable enough to know exactly what you were going to get from him every weekend, and that was a minimum 7/10 performance, and you sense that without that reliability, he wouldn’t be picked in a Dyche team every weekend.
First and foremost, he was a solid defender, one who, with that bit of experience, understood exactly what was being asked of him by Dyche, and primarily that was to defend.
That’s not to say he couldn’t attack though, and it wasn’t unusual to see him bombing down the left to support the attacks, with a stunning volley on the opening day at Chelsea in 2017 a rare sighting of what he could produce in the final third.
At the time Burnley signed Ward, good quality left backs were costly to sign, and they were also few and far between, so to sign Ward for such a small fee and get the service they did out of him was phenomenal business.
Charlie Taylor’s signing spelled the beginning of the end for Ward
With age working against him, the Clarets swooped in 2017 to sign Charlie Taylor after he refused a new contract at Leeds United, and there was a sense that almost spelled the beginning of the end of Ward’s Burnley career.
Still, in the first season after Taylor’s arrival, Ward played 28 times, and was still very much the first-choice left-back when fit, but with a younger, fresher model chomping at his heels to get in the team, he knew his days were numbered.
| Stephen Ward’s Burnley record (Transfermarkt) | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Games played | Goals | Assists | Points per game average |
| 113 | 4 | 6 | 1.52 |
Taylor was brought in to learn from Ward’s experienced head with a view to eventually becoming the first-choice left back, and that’s eventually what happened.
After that 2017/18 season, during which Ward was sensational, he only went on to play 10 more times for Burnley, but perhaps fittingly, at least four of them were in the Europa League.
He departed in 2019 on a free transfer to Stoke City, but he left having made a lasting impact at Turf Moor and can always say he played a key role in making history for the club.
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