SEAN Dyche has hailed the 'unseen' work done by Ashley Barnes as the Clarets striker continues to bang in the goals.

The 28-year-old has scored in three successive games for the first time since scoring in four straight games for Brighton in League One at the end of the 2010/11 season.

Barnes' goals against Southampton, Everton and West Ham have taken him to seven in the season in all competitions and 17 in the Premier League for Burnley since moving to the club for £450,000 from the Seagulls.

But there is plenty more to Barnes' game than the raw numbers suggest, with his style regularly unsettling opposition defences while he can often be the first line of defence himself for the Clarets.

While his style is regularly described as old-fashioned, Dyche believes the Bath-born striker, who signed a new contract this week keeping him at Turf Moor until 2021, is actually the perfect modern forward with the way he plays for the team.

"He’s certainly in a rich vein of form! A lot of his work goes unnoticed, (with) what he does for the team," the Clarets chief said.

"Strikers inevitably are judged on their goals, but he does a lot of work. "People use the word old-fashioned, but it’s never been more modern, at times, the way he plays, because he’s hard to deal with.

"That’s the job of a striker."

Having struggled for goals for large parts of the season Burnley have now hit five in their last two games, bouncing back to winning ways with a 2-1 success over Everton and a 3-0 win at West Ham.

All of those have comes from either Barnes or Chris Wood, who has risen from the bench to score three times in his last 75 minutes of football.

That has taken their combined Premier League tally to 13 for the season, just under half of the 27 Burnley have scored in the top flight in their 30 games.

Those goals have helped Burnley end a run of 12 games without a win in all competitions and Dyche insists that stretch of results was always likely to turn as soon as the worst injury crisis he has dealt with at the club began to ease.

“I’m pleased for him (Barnes) and Woody, goals on the table again, but pleased for the team, the mentality has been really strong, and we’ve only one loss in six now, so work that one out, now the story changes," Dyche said.

“When the group gets back to what it is, I felt we were stronger than we have been in previous seasons, and that’s shown with people getting fit again."