Sean Dyche believes Burnley’s long-term plans to professionalise the women’s team represent just the beginning of the vision of the club’s new ownership.

American group ALK Capital completed their takeover at Turf Moor in January but have had limited opportunity to put their stamp on the club amid the pandemic.

But there was a significant statement of intent this week with the full integration of Burnley FC Women into the club, with a target of reaching the Women’s Championship by 2025 before turning professional.

For Dyche it is a sign of the new ownership’s intentions.

“To be fair they’re active, they want to make a difference,” Dyche said. “It’s a difficult time to really get your hands on things.

“The club to be fair has been venturing down these roads for a while, opening up different avenues and different thoughts on where the club can go and it seems to me (the new owners) want to grip it and run with and make them happen a bit quicker.

“The first one is the women’s team, it’s a great step for the club as a whole and there are number of things they want to be dynamic with while of course sitting back to learn about the club and the real way that it runs.”

For the first few weeks of the new regime Dyche had managed nothing more than a handful of video calls with his new paymasters.

He has now managed one meeting but discussions on future plans are yet to take shape.

“It was more of an overview,” Dyche said of the conversation. “It was not detailed. There are so many different facets to the job from their side of things coming into the club.

“From the football side it was a general overview, ideas on communication between ourselves, it was not really detailed down into any specifics.

“But it was the first time literally other than meeting them for Covid testing, passing them in a car. We couldn’t shake hands or anything obviously, but other than passing them in the car it was the first meeting we’ve had.

“It was a bit surreal. We’ve got some big rooms here, so we were distancing and just sharing some thoughts.”

But Dyche expects the ideas to take fuller form once chairman Alan Pace and his group have been able to have more interaction with fans.

“The hardest thing for them at the moment is for them to get a feel for that connection with the fans,” he added.

“It’s very difficult with the empty stadium.

“You end up doing stuff through social media and that’s great, that’s part of the job, but for that connection, that real feedback from people around the ground and the stadium – that will go on more and more when, we all hope, the world starts turning again on a grander scale than just football.”