THERE have been some famous superstitions in football.

Take Paul Ince, for one. The former Manchester United and Liverpool midfielder always made sure he was the last player onto the pitch, and would wait until he was coming out of the tunnel before putting on his shirt.

Gary Lineker would never take a shot at goal during pre-match warm-ups so as not to waste a chance during the 90 minutes. Then, if he failed to score in the first half, he would change his shirt for the second. A game without a goal meant a haircut for the former Leicester, Spurs and England striker.

Retired goalkeeper David James admitted to a complex pre-match routine that included rituals as bizarre as “going into the urinals, waiting until they were empty and spitting on the wall”, while Laurent Blanc would kiss the head of France team-mate Fabian Barthez before each game.

The list is long, but you won’t find Sean Dyche among the names of those with weird and wonderful matchday habits.

“I was a routinist, and still am. I like my routine. It’s a subtle difference, but it’s a difference because if routine goes wrong you don’t worry about it. You just change your routine,” said the Burnley boss, who unlike many football folk does not subscribe to the theory that the manager of the month award is a curse.

“In my experience of watching other people get manager of the month it’s stats.

“Stats eventually suggest that if you’ve had that good month there’s an increased chance in the next game or whatever…”

The manager’s sentence trails off before he finishes it. If you didn’t know better you might think that he was perhaps not wishing to risk tempting fate.

But he has been here before, three times during the promotion season, when a winning five-game unbeaten September (with four wins) was followed up by a four-game winning October.

At the business end of the season, 13 points from a possible 18 in April helped them to get over the line and seal second place.

After receiving each manager of the month award, Burnley either won or drew, dispelling the myth that recipients are destined for defeat in their next game.

“Now the idea is to make sure you perform so that doesn’t happen,” said Dyche. “But I certainly don’t think there’s any weird hoodoo over it. And, in my opinion, it’s highly likely that superstition doesn’t actually work.

“When I was playing I used to have a routine but it wasn’t superstition.

“I was just one of those people who thought ‘if I drop the toilet seat three times it’s unlikely that’s going to make me play well’, or whatever. That was my thinking on it.

“You get those who put their shirt on last in the tunnel.

“What I will say though is that I’m not against people doing it, because that might be their way of pre-framing their brain to say ‘I’m in work mode and getting ready to do what I do’.

“So I don’t question others having a superstition or a routine, or whichever way you want to put it. They crack on, no problem at all.”

It is just not the Burnley boss’s preference.

“I’ve still roughly got a routine now.

“It’s not built on superstition, it just makes me feel right for a game.

“It’s a softer routine, because you’re prepping mentally not physically,” said Dyche, who goes to Huddersfield today in search of a sixth straight win after being named manager of the month for the first time this season, following two earlier nominations.