Sean Dyche stressed Burnley will continue to be run prudently after a financial study from UEFA showed they had a greater operating profit than the likes of Bayern Munich in 2015.

UEFA released their eighth annual club licensing benchmark report on Thursday, offering an insight into European teams’ financial status up until the end of 2015, and alongside the usual continental powerhouses at the top of the profit lists were Dyche’s Clarets.

The east Lancashire side were relegated from the Premier League in 2015 but accrued more in operating profit than Bayern, Tottenham and Borussia Dortmund, ranking 10th among clubs across Europe, with both Manchester clubs, Liverpool and Arsenal the only English teams to produce greater returns than the Clarets’ 54million euros.

Their standing in the net profit list was even more impressive, with just Liverpool, Newcastle and Real Madrid turning over a greater margin as Burnley’s board decided not to carelessly gamble in the transfer market in the hope of remaining in the top flight.

Now back in the Premier League, they broke their transfer record twice in the summer and are in the process of giving their training ground a £10.6million facelift, but balancing the books remains of paramount importance.

“I think it’s a sign of trying to find the correct balance both on and off the pitch,” Dyche said of the figures.

“It’s an ongoing thing that’s very difficult. The demand of fans and me as manager in a different kind of way is, ‘why aren’t you doing this or that?’. That’s just the nature of the game. The realities from that are we can’t do everything.

“It’s a club that has to be run properly. It’s not one with benefactors who can say, ‘it doesn’t matter because here’s £100million’. A balance has to be found and it’s not just year one either, it’s year two, three and four, it has to be an ongoing manageable business, and unless that changes I totally respect that and I work within it.

“It is hard at times as a manager. You want to buy the best players you can and you want to increase your chances of being successful, but there has to be a balance to that and I get it.

“I’ve always said if it was a different club with a different ownership who said, ‘don’t worry about the club because we’re going to back the club for the next 20 years and put millions in’, I’d spend it. But it’s not the case, so I manage what’s given to me. That’s just the way I thought it always should be done.”

When Burnley went down in 2015, they did so alongside QPR, whose net debt for that year of 279m euros was the fifth highest on the continent, and they now find themselves battling to avoid another relegation.

The adjustment process for the likes of Rangers, Blackburn and Bolton after demotion to the second tier has been stark and Dyche cited his experience at Watford as one of the reasons he understands his current club’s economical outlook.

“The trouble comes if you offer more than you are capable of offering and if it doesn’t work,” he added.

“We’ve all seen the stories down the years of the heaven of being in the Premier League and then the hell of not being in the Premier League.

“Maybe my understanding has a bit more clarity to it in that I saw Watford go from Premier League to 24 hours from going into receivership in three years. That’s maybe something that subliminally has always stuck with me.”