SEAN Dyche has praised his Burnley young guns after the teenagers made another bright impression in the victory over Bolton.

Midfielder Aiden O’Neill, 18, featured for the fourth successive game and was the only player to play the full 90 minutes at the Macron, while 19-year-old Josh Ginnelly came off the bench and netted a late winner.

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Striker Dan Agyei, 19, had a productive hour while Brad Jackson, also 19, featured for the first time this summer after being called up to the squad late on after the withdrawals of David Jones and Fredrik Ulvestad.

But despite the promising signs from the academy starlets in pre-season Dyche insists they still have work to do before becoming recognised first-team players.

“Pre-season is a great time to give the youngsters a feel of what it is like in first team life,” he said.

“We try and use it wisely, not putting them in when they don’t deserve it, because they’ve done ever so well in this pre-season, but they’ve still got a journey yet to be recognised first team players but it starts with getting a feel of it.

“It will do Josh the world of good to come on and get his first goal, it was a really nice strike, Aiden I thought was terrific, Daniel Agyei as well, there were good signs from him, and young Brad who was with us at the beginning of last pre-season.

“There’s good signs, they are there, it’s just a case of keeping them developing.”

Come the start of the Premier League the likes of O’Neill, Ginnelly, Agyei and Jackson are likely to drop back from the first team picture, with Dyche admitting the top flight is ‘unforgiving’ for youngsters and cautioning that they have to develop at the right speed.

While they might return to development squad action, the quartet could also find themselves sent out on loan, with the Clarets chief insisting all four are ready for Football League action.

“You can see they’re ready, they are players I feel strongly are ready,” Dyche said.

“I played in all the leagues as a player and they are definitely ready for league football in my opinion.

“That physicality helps because it is tough, football is a tough industry anyway, changes of style and play, all the things it takes to go out on loan, but the perfect loan isn’t always the one that goes magically well, you play fantastically well - that’s helpful, of course, but sometimes it’s the one that’s a bit of a shock to you, where you weren’t expecting it to be like that.”

Dyche also thinks the £10.6million redevelopment of the Clarets’ Gawthorpe training ground will help the academy kids see the pathway to the first team.

“The academy is growing, we need more depth to it, but the top end of the development squad are definitely showing good signs,” he added.

“We’ve tried to improve it over time, the training ground will help enormously, a lot of the younger groups have had to train on astroturf, but the pitches have improved, we’ve got all of the older teams (U18 and U21s) together at the Barnfield Training Centre now, all on the grass, which is brilliant.

“We can flip-flop players in and out of the groups, get players over quickly to have a training session with us, so it’s a much better system.

“A 16-year-old now can see the development group and the first team, so the journey is right in front of their eyes.”