Get the FREE Mirror Football newsletter by email with the day's key headlines and transfer news Sign up Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

Sean Dyche has every reason to be fond of the League Cup – as it once won him a free television set for his mum and dad.

Burnley’s manager earned the TV as a man-of-the-match prize when he played for Chesterfield in the 1990s and the competition was sponsored by electronics retailer Rumbelows.

Yet Dyche is more focused on Premier League safety than shiny prizes now that he is a manager – insisting that the Clarets cannot put their top-flight status in jeopardy for the sake of a cup run.

He said: “When it was the Rumbelows Cup, you used to win a TV if you were man of the match. I gave it to my mum and dad. It was a proper, real, good, high-quality Sony TV. It was worth more than my week’s wages.

“When you’re a player at Chesterfield, you’re probably not thinking that you’re going to win the league, so you enjoy the games, and you get a nice little Brucie bonus, if you’re man of the match, by winning a TV, which I did.

(Image: Allsport)

“The next year, I won a bike. Coca-Cola sponsored it, and because they weren’t going to get a crate of Coca-Cola, you got a bike.

“Nicky Law, who played alongside me at Chesterfield and is now one of our scouts, had his kid buy it off me for about £40.”

Dyche insists he is taking the Carabao Cup seriously as Championship promotion hopefuls Leeds visit for tonight’s third-round tie, but adds that the league must take priority.

(Image: AFP)

He said: “The fact is that the Premier League is where everyone wants to be. It’s nothing to do with downgrading a cup. It’s just a fact. Everyone is clamouring to be in the Premier League.

“Clubs don’t just want the riches. They want the kudos, they want what being in the Premier League brings from a brand and a club point of view, and the knock-on effect for the area.

“The whole town of Burnley benefits from the team being in the Premier League in some way or another.

“I’ve had some great times in cups, as everyone knows. I don’t look at it as a lesser competition. I look at it as a competition we want to do well in.”