KEVIN Nolan is on Burnley’s radar after leaving West Ham United this week.

Clarets boss Sean Dyche is understood to have weighed up a move for the 33-year-old before his Upton Park exit was finalised on Thursday.

And that interest could be revisited now that the former Bolton and Newcastle midfielder is a free agent, despite bolstering that department with the signing of Joey Barton on Thursday night.

Ahead of this afternoon’s trip to Bristol City, Dyche noted that Nolan and Barton could be a formidable duo, particularly as two players who have experienced winning promotion into the Premier League.

“He and Joey are those types that could affect a group, they can lead,” said the Burnley boss.

“They’ve played in the Championship, and they’ve got out of the Championship.

“They’ve played most of their careers in the top level of football, yet they’ve come out of that and played with teams who have gone into the top level of football, so there’s an understanding of the challenge for both of those players.”

And Dyche said that making permanent additions to his squad ahead of Tuesday night’s transfer deadline was the priority over the use of the loan market, although as a free agent Nolan would not be governed by those restrictions.

“We do want to get to a situation where we say ‘that’s our main squad’ and that’s the main group who we think will be involved most of the time,” he said.

“We’re nearly there, we’ve got some kind of shape to it.

“There are a couple of situations we still think that can add to that to give us that rounded squad to move forward.

“Of course the loan market then does open, but I think most managers would think when you sign players they’re here for the immediacy, the mid-term and the longer term. When you loan players they come in with the thinking ‘you must be loaning me to play me’. There are extreme circumstances, it might be a younger player who is coming to get a feel of being involved in the first team and that type of thing.

“But usually you sign loan players because you need them to come in and play, and equally usually they go to a club on loan because they want to play.

“So I always think first things first, if you can make actual signings, as long as you’ve got the capability to do that, which we have, then we do that first.”

The Burnley boss added: “The ideal planning of course is during the summer you get your signings in and ideally it would be before the first day of pre-season, but it’s not an ideal market out there, as we now know. We’ve had to work very hard for the deals we’ve had and some have taken longer than others.

“Now that we’re into the season we are still forming the group.

“Before we got our win on Saturday people were wondering, but the group isn’t formed yet and the team isn’t formed yet because of the nature of the market. There are still a couple of situations.

“Beyond that the loan window gives you an opportunity to flex and change again, whether that’s outgoings or incomings.”