0:50 Burnley manager Sean Dyche has suggested more of his squad could earn England call-ups after goalkeeper Nick Pope was selected by Gareth Southgate.
“To have been part of different squads, to have been on standby for the World Cup – I feel honoured and fortunate in a sense,” he says. “But now I want to keep pushing to be in more squads and play more games for England. I’ve got a taste for it and I feel I’m good enough to be around it.
“I just hope that the people who are looking at me now and are trying to judge me can also see the player that I was before I came to Burnley, the different sides to my game that I’ve shown and the way I’ve played for England.”
For now, he’s focused on helping his team to make a positive start to the new Premier League campaign. Had they not conceded a stoppage-time penalty at Wolves last weekend they would have taken six points from their first three games. It’s an improvement however on how they began last season. Tarkowski admits that the absence of Europa League football this time around might be working in their favour.
2:54 Highlights from Wolves' 1-1 draw with Burnley in the Premier League.
“You maybe lose a bit of focus on the Premier League because you’ve a lot going on with the travelling and the training abroad,” he says. “We had a full pre-season’s training and I feel like this is the fittest team I’ve seen, everyone’s putting in a high level of performance, fitness-wise. I think it shows because we’re going right to the 99th minute in games and pushing teams to the end.”
Burnley are now in their fourth successive season in the Premier League. That experience, Tarkowski feels, stands them in better stead when they face teams like Liverpool.
“Initially when we came into this league we used to say it’s a bit of a free one – everyone’s expecting us to get beaten,” he says. “Now we’re going into these games wanting to get something out of them. We expect a lot of ourselves and we’ve taken points from big teams before so there’s no reason why we can’t do it again.”
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Sourse: skysports.com
